The Development of a Field: The Philosophy of History and the
Transcript of The Development of a Field: The Philosophy of History and the
Wesleyan University The Honors College
The Development of a Field: The Philosophy of History and The Linguistic Turn
by
Samuel Ehrlich Backer Class of 2011
A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
with Departmental Honors in History Middletown, Connecticut April, 2011
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Gary Shaw, for all of his help and support. This thesis has come quite a ways (spiral-wise) since we first began working on it, and he has never failed to give me just enough rope to explore without ever allowing me to fall completely off of the edge of the cliff. I would like to thank the faculty of the Wesleyan University History department, for providing me with a tremendous undergraduate education. I would like to thank Professors Braxton and Kuivila for teaching me about the nature of compositional structure, an approach to analysis that has proved as applicable to history as it is to music. I would like to thank all of the other senior thesis writers. I personally couldn’t have done this without the community that all of you provided me with. And I would also like to thank the Wesleyan community as a whole - the support that I received from any number of people allowed me to do this, from those who helped me with the thesis itself (THANKS MEGGIE, KARMA, MICA!), to those who listened to me complain, or made me get meals, or knocked on my carrel door, or just asked me how things were going. Wesleyan is an amazing place for a number of reasons, but one of the most special is the fact that seniors are actively encouraged to take on these lengthy, stressful, and somewhat crazy projects. Without the community’s support, this wouldn’t be able to happen. I would like to point out to Emily Weiss that we did it. I would like to thank Rachel E. Lipson, for so many more things than I can possible list. I would like to thank my grandparents, both of whom have encouraged my interest in “big ideas” in very different ways. And I would like to thank my family, for everything.
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Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………….......4 Chapter One- The Birth of the Anglo-American Philosophy of History………..9 Chapter Two- The Rhetorical Moment of Hayden White……………………… 44 Chapter Three- The Linguistic Turn and The Philosophy of History…………106 Conclusion- The Philosophy of the History of The Philosophy of History.........153 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….…176
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Introduction
The philosophy of history has always been an unusual field. Academically, it
has perennially been on the outskirts of the more substantial disciplines to which it is
attached, functioning in relation to their discourses without ever really being a part of
them. Never in the mainstream of philosophy, it has also been ignored by “practicing”
historians almost as a matter of tradition. Yet despite this, during the last half-
century, the philosophy of history has managed to become one of the most influential
areas in the academy, garnering massive amounts of interest, and playing an
important role in many of the most important debates that have taken place within
humanities during this time.
This success has resulted from many of the same issues that make its identity so
problematic. Lacking a clear departmental allegiance, work done within the
philosophy of history has been able to bridge a number of significant disciplinary
gaps, becoming a major force in the creation of the interdisciplinary approach to
study that is such a presence in modern academic life. By connecting historical
inquiry to the theoretical tools of literary studies, the philosophy of history helped to
inaugurate the linguistic turn that has transformed the American academy, bringing to
power the various interpretive approaches that have been lumped together under the
general description of “post-modern theory.” Although the full implications of this
turn are still being sorted through, it has been an intellectual event of overwhelming
importance, one that has constituted a fundamental shift in Western thought.
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It cannot be this work’s goal to attempt to track these cultural dynamics in an
effort to provide an explanation of the “linguistic turn” as a whole, nor even to offer
an adequate description of its effects in relation to the philosophy of history. Like any
truly substantial historical process, it is impossible to reduce the linguistic turn to a
single definition or narrative. Moreover, it is not clear that such large scale changes
function in a manner that can be understood through causal analysis. Because the
linguistic turn reflected a large-scale change in the nature of intellectual culture, its
overall dynamics were manifested through any number of observable occurrences and
trends, and therefore cannot necessarily be traced to any single set of developments.
That said, the particular reactions that individuals formulate in reaction to these
circumstances can have a significant effect by altering how these dynamics are
articulated, and thus changing the overall nature of the tensions that structure the
period.
To a great extent, the effects of the linguistic turn are based on the ways in
which it has reformulated the Western conception of knowledge, particularly in
regards to the intellectual environment of the academy. One of the unique aspects of
academic life is that, to a certain extent, it serves as a concrete metaphor for the
structure of knowledge that it perpetuates; different departments physically enforce
the boundaries between types of thinking. Thus, the clearest manifestation of the
impact of the linguistic turn on these structures can be seen in the proliferation of
interdisciplinary inquiry that it has enabled. Given the importance of the philosophy
of history in creating the interdisciplinary spaces in which the linguistic turn could
both be enacted and understood, a close examination of the field can provide
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invaluable insight into the historical processes by which these much discussed events
came to assume their current position.
This thesis is a history of the modern philosophy of history, covering its
development from its beginning in the controversy surrounding the Covering Law
Model, and following it until the present day. In the course of doing this, I will try to
make the argument that, far from merely being an adjunct to history, the philosophy
of history is a vital intellectual project in its own right, one with an extensive and
complex history. Furthermore, I will also attempt to describe its functioning as a
unified field with a clear identity, rather then a collection of independent figures
whose disciplinary proper identity is based elsewhere.
Although there is much written about the philosophy of history, surprisingly
little of it is actually historical in nature. Like so much about the philosophy of
history, this can be traced to the complexities of its disciplinary identity. While its
major figures are often mentioned in works written on the historiography of the
twentieth century, these accounts are necessarily concerned with issues and
developments of historians and history, As a result, they discuss the philosophy of
history only marginally, mentioned the theoretical contributions that it has made to
historical practice without contextualizing them in relation to the discourse in which
they were actually functioned. This leads to a lack of comprehension of the dynamics
within the field as a whole, and therefore makes it difficult to fully analyze the nature
its most influential academic exports. On the other hand, there do exist a number of
historical or semi-historical accounts written by those who are connected with the
field, usually philosophers by training. While these accounts demonstrate a fuller
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knowledge of the discipline as a whole, the perspective from which they write often
obscures their ability to adequately analyze its historical development. Because these
authors are usually engaged with the philosophy of history themselves, and they have
tended to focus on the philosophical or logical progression of the field, dealing with it
in terms of a developing set of arguments without considering the other elements at
play within its field of discourse. Moreover, given that this writing often appears in
the context of a new piece of philosophy, the historical interpretation has often been
shaped by the views of the author in order to connect it to this position, resulting in a
product with fairly little historical utility.
There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to this statement. Among the
philosophers, there are a few who have produced excellent historical accounts of the
field, most notably Arthur Danto and Frank Ankersmit1. In addition, a number of
intellectual historians have done an excellent job at discussing the nature of certain
aspects of the field. In this literature, the authors whose work particularly stands out
are John E. Toes2, Richard. T. Vann3, and Ethan Kleinburg4. While all of these works
1 The vital work by Danto is essay “The Decline and Fall of the Analytic Philosophy
of History. Ankersmit has tended to produce this sort of account more regularly, and so elements of history appear in much of his work. That said, the book that best engages with this subject is “Tropology: the Rise and Fall of a Metaphor.” Arthur Danto, “The Decline and Fall of the Analytical Philosophy of History” in Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner, eds. A New Philosophy of History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995. Frank Ankersmit, Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor. Berkeley, CA. University of California Press. 1994. 2 John E. Toews, “Review: Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience.” The American Historical Review, Vol 92, No. 4 (1987): 879-907. 3 Richard T Vann “The Reception of Hayden White.” History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1998): 143-161, and “Turning Linguistic: History and Theory and History and
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have been extremely useful, none of them deals with the issue in the depth necessary
to more fully explicate the long-term patterns within the field. As a result, I believe
that these approaches have left a fundamental gap in the historical literature on this
period, one that can be rectified by the type of investigation undertaken by this thesis.
Moreover, given the unique relationship that exists between history and the
philosophy of history, I also believe that formulating an historical description of the
development of this latter field is vitally important for the future of both. As I
mentioned before, history has long had an aversion to the philosophical consideration
of its nature. In large part, I believe this can be attributed to historians’ well-founded
rejection of the basic relation to history implied by the disciplinary structure of the
philosophy of history. Only by coming to historicize the products of this field,
apprehending them as works that are limited by their context while also holding
valuable interpretations about the nature of history, can the gap between the two be
closed. Given the important work that continues to be done in the philosophy of
history, I can only believe that such a process would greatly strengthen the practice of
both disciplines.
Theory 1960-1975” in Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner, eds. A New Philosophy of History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995. 4 Ethan Kleinberg. “Haunting History: Deconstruction and the Spirit of Revision.” History and Theory, Vol. 46 (2007): 113-43.
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Chapter one- The Birth of the Anglo-American Philosophy of History
According to most accounts, the development of a body linguistically based
historiographic theory/philosophy5 within the Anglo-American academy during the
latter decades of the twentieth century is seen as being closely, if not inextricably, tied
to the far broader “linguistic” or “post-modern” turn taken by the humanities and
social sciences during this period. This “turn,” understood to have resulted from the
introduction and widespread adoption of a body of structuralist and post-structuralist
continental philosophy, is often taken as having initiated a fundamental shift in the
intellectual model of western (or at least Anglo-American) thought, directly
instigating the insistently self-reflexive and/or deconstructionist tendencies that have
become hallmarks of the “post-modern” academy. This depiction of recent
intellectual history has, for the most part, provided the widely accepted narrative
backdrop for the theoretical debates that have occupied a central role in
historiographic discussions since the mid 1980’s, debates that have been
characterized not only by the standard rhetorical intensity of academia, but with a
particularly vehement sense of threat and challenge, epitomized by the frequent
descriptions of a “ruined” or “destroyed” discipline of history, and the constant
5 Although this issue be discussed further in the conclusion, it is important to note that I am using these terms to denote different things. Theory is the application of a methodologically rigorous interpretive strategy within a discipline, while philosophy is a discipline in and of itself. Thus, it is possible to have a theoretical history, or a theoretical philosophy, but the two occupy different categories. In this case, the possibility of confusion stems from the fact that post-structuralist philosophies were often used as theories within history.
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reiteration of martial metaphors that suggests the presence of something deeper at
stake.
While the description of the “linguistic turn” given above captures a certain
amount of truth, it fails to recognize the extent to which there was, prior to the trans-
Atlantic debut of continental theory, an “indigenous” Anglo-American philosophy of
history that took as its primary focus many of the issues that are often assumed to
have been introduced into the historical discourse by the French theorists. Given the
clear prevalence of this later movement in respect to both its terminological and
cultural presence, ascertaining the extent to which the discussions surrounding
historical epistemology and textuality/narrativity were influenced by the earlier
period of Anglo-American philosophy can be difficult. During the period in which
historical questions formed a significant area of philosophical interest, it seems clear
that little of the discussion penetrated to the actual practice of “working” historians in
the way that the “linguistic turn” evidently has. Yet despite this, there can be no
question that definite chains of influence do exist. Although it may garner little
recognition from modern scholarship, the work done in the philosophy of history
prior to the linguistic turn had a significant impact on the shape taken by European
theory as it made its way into the Anglo-American academy, defining many of the
basic features of the intellectual landscape that would later be recast into alternate
terminology without making any major changes to their basic structures. Given this
important influence, any attempt to evaluate the development of the modern
philosophy of history must take this earlier work into account.
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In terms of its intellectual lineage, the work done on the philosophy of history
in the Anglo-American sphere emerged in the context of the then-dominant tradition
of analytic philosophy. In the course of its rejection of what its proponents considered
to be the unfounded metaphysical idealism of many of the major philosophical
schools prevalent during the nineteenth century,6 those working in this tradition had
begun to reconsider the epistemological position that philosophy should properly
occupy, attempting to develop closer links with the empirically-based knowledge
obtainable through the natural sciences. 7 This resulted in a significant increase of
interest in the philosophy of science, as analytical philosophers began to utilize the
language and statement-analysis tools that they had developed to explore the logical
structures by means of which scientific statements seemed capable of producing
knowledge, specifically through their ability to explain events. This focus on
explanation resulted from a belief that the vast majority of the previously insoluble
problems in philosophy were the result of logical inconsistencies within the language
used to describe them. On a closer analysis, most could be demonstrated to have been
formulated in a manner that rendered them fundamentally nonsensical.
6 “The analytic movement in the twentieth century philosophy was initially a reaction against the views of F.H. Bradley and the Neo-Hegelian philosophers of the preceding century…The attack against this a priori, speculative outlook on philosophy was led in the first instance by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, who are rightly regarded as the co-founders of the analytic movement. Moore, who has been described by his contemporary C.D. Broad as having ‘not the slightest belief in the possibility of any constructive metaphysics’ introduced into philosophy a convert to discover the exact meaning of philosophically troublesome terms and expressions which persists to the present day.” T. M. Reed, “Analytic Philosophy in the 20th Century” American Libraries, Vol. 2, No. 11 (1971), 1161. 7 “An important consequence of the preoccupation with conceptual analysis on the part of contemporary philosophers has been the conceptual investigation by philosophers of disciplines other than philosophy…” Reed, “Analytic Philosophy in the 20th Century”, 1162.
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It was this attempt to define the logical prerequisites for adequate explanation
that would develop into the analytic philosophy of history. “Most of the philosophers
who addressed themselves to the question had little interest in existing historical
practice, either in criticizing it or in reforming it. Their interest was with the nature of
logical inference. Historical explanation was of interest as the limiting case of a
general model of scientific explanation.8” In this way, the new “critical” or “analytic”
philosophy of history was sharply differentiated from the Hegelian-style
“substantive” philosophy of history that had attempted to uncover the metaphysical
“meanings” behind historical events in a manner that was often considered quasi-
theological.9. “Unlike the older ‘speculative’ or ‘substantive’ philosophy of history,
the new sub-discipline was concerned not with overall interpretative schemes, but
with the immanent logic of historical inquiry.10” As noted before, this new analytical
philosophy of history developed in a close relation to the philosophy of science, with
some philosophers (most notably Karl Popper and Carl Hempel) becoming leading
figures in both fields. Because of this close connection, the work produced by this
movement tended to hue closely to both the disciplinary values and logical style of
the sciences. Its major articles were published in journals such as The Philosophy of
Science, and its major writers almost exclusively belonged to philosophy
departments. As a result of this distance from both their disciplinary organization and
actual practical experiences, the debates concerning the philosophy of history held
8 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: the "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge (England: Cambridge UP, 1988), 94. 9 Arthur C Danto, The Analytical Philosophy of History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 9. 10 Novack, That Noble Dream, 392.
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little interest for most historians besides their occasional need to strongly denounce
the conclusions that it had drawn concerning their professional activities. “Jurgen
Herbst, who in the 1960’s surveyed theoretical offerings in two hundred history
departments, found concern with the philosophy of history ‘peripheral.’”11
To a great extent, the beginning of this period was marked by the 1942
appearance of “The Function of the General Laws in History” by Carl. G. Hempel.
While a great deal of the article’s content was closely based on the work of Karl
Popper12, Hempel presented his argument in a succinct and highly readable fashion
that, coupled with the strength and forcefulness of his basic assertions, allowed its
arguments to be easily injected into the wider discourse. In essence, “The Function of
General Laws in History” is an attempt to formulate a description of what historians
are doing when they write an account of the past that would be more accurate than the
self-understanding that the discipline was then thought to possess. This description is
therefore intimately tied to a criticism of the historical profession’s lack of theoretical
justification, particularly as it relates to their ability to adequately explain the
occurrences of the past through their research and writings.
Hempel argues that historians have claimed that their primary goal is a
detailed investigation into the nature of specific and unique past occurrences, “a
description of particular events of the past rather than with the search for general laws
which might govern these events.13” However, whenever historians attempt to go
11 Novack, That Noble Dream, 398. 12 Elizabeth A Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Cambridge, (MA: Harvard UP, 2004), 30-31.
13 Carl G. Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History,” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1942), 35.
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beyond a purely static description, and claim any sort of causal or explanatory
connection between various facts about the past, they are by necessity utilizing some
kind of “general law,” regardless of whether or not they realize they are doing so.
Hempel characterized a valid description as possessing three separate elements, each
of which needed to be fully articulated: an event/object whose action is to be
explained and described (referred to as the explanandum), the antecedents/causes that
also need to be described (the explanans), and the “general laws” whose universal
applicability allows not only a valid causal connection to be drawn between the two,
but a necessary connection such that the explanandum could not have occurred
without the existence of the explanans. Hempel argued that historical
descriptions/explanations utilize this basic structure, even if they only do so
implicitly. “Particularly such terms as ‘hence,’ ‘therefore,’ ‘consequently,’ ‘because,’
… are often indicative of the tacit presupposition of some general law: they are used
to tie up the initial conditions with the event to be explained; but that the latter was
‘naturally’ to be expected as ‘a consequence’ of the stated conditions follows only if
suitable general laws are presupposed.14” General laws, Hempel claims, are
statements of universal and empirically testable validity that are necessary to link a
description/quantification of the causes/antecedents of an event to the event itself,
laws necessarily implying that “whenever events of the kind described in the first
group occur, an event of the kind to be explained will take place.15”
As stated before, Hempel firmly believed that the existence of such laws is
always implied in any historical explanation, drawn on in the basic structures of
14 Ibid, 40. 15 Ibid, 36.
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thought that allows an explanation of any kind to be formulated. According to the
argument put forth in “The Function of General Laws,” the important distinction to
make is whether the laws being utilized are either adequately specified such that it
would be possible for them (at least hypothetically) to be tested or referenced, or
whether the laws being drawn on are so vague as to be essentially non-existent, and
therefore lacking in any possible validity. Hempel referred to the first variety of
implicit general laws as an “explanation sketch,” and admitted that, given the specific
difficulties inherent in the investigation of the past, moving beyond an increasingly
detailed version of such a sketch might be impossible. Although the full truth might
be unreachable, such a model allowed for a system of research that was guided by the
evidence itself; although an explanation sketch might be incomplete, it “points into
the direction where the [more accurate] statements are to be found.16” On the other
hand, he rejected the second variety of historical explanation, in which the general
law that served as the explanatory connection between the explanans and
explanandum was so vague as to be entirely inclusive, altogether, deeming the
prevalence of such explanations as a mark of the undeveloped nature of the historical
discipline. “For example, the geographic or economic conditions under which a group
lives may account for certain general features of, say, its art or its moral codes; but to
grant this does not mean that the artistic achievements of the group or its system of
morals has thus been explained in detail; for this would imply that from a description
of the prevalent geographic or economic conditions alone, a detailed account of
16 Ibid, 42.
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certain aspects of the cultural life of the group can be deduced by means of
specifiable general laws.17”
Attempting to understand the implications of this particular piece of theory
from the position of the present is somewhat difficult. Given the path that both the
theory and the philosophy of history have taken, it would be easy to dismiss many of
the claims made by the article as entirely outmoded, a piece of overconfident
empirical positivism that has little or no bearing on the present understanding of
history. Yet at the same time, it is also possible to read Hempel’s work with a more
nuanced eye, noting the structural similarities that many of its central ideas share with
later developments. Considered in this manner, Hempel’s introduction of a particular
style of analysis to the philosophy of history should be viewed as an enormously
important development, one that did much to establish the basic character of the field.
In his attempt to uncover the logical structure of historical explanation, he formulated
an approach to philosophy of history that was focused on examining the investigative
process itself, while paying little or no attention to questions concerning the nature or
truth of the past. In many ways, the analytical importance of maintaining the clear
division between these two aspects of history can be understood as the fundamental
insight that allowed the philosophy of history to exist as a field of study in its modern
form. Thus, even if the conclusions at which Hempel arrived have been widely
discounted, the same cannot be said for the manner in which he approached the
problems that he was attempting to solve.
17 Ibid, 43.
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Hempel’s article was widely influential, kick-starting an active
philosophical debate on both the nature and epistemological grounding of historical
work, and quickly assuming the position of the theoretical ground-zero around which
this discussion was based.18 The paradigm-creating impact of Hempel’s argument
meant that it almost immediately came under criticism from a variety of positions,
ranging from those who agreed with its basic premises while attempting to modify
specific aspects of its presentation, to others who felt that it had fundamentally
misrepresented the manner in which the study and writing of history functioned and
ought to be understood. Viewed from the perspective of the present, the initial stages
of the debate are somewhat hard to parse, as great volumes of writing were expended
on what appear to be relatively minor points of emphasis, questions that seem to
concern less the validity of the theory taken as a whole than smaller questions
concerning the delineation of its explanatory scope. This strange appearance is, for
the most part, the result of the importance of the theoretical issues that had emerged
in the discussion of what came to be termed the “covering-law model” (hereafter
C.L.M.) within a larger battle for meaning within analytical philosophy in general. As
a result, the positions staked out by the various participants in the debate often had
wide-ranging implications that were far broader than the issues that were specifically
discussed within any given text, and that were therefore both criticized and defended
with a vehemence out of all proportion to what often appeared to be at stake.
18 This characterization was repeated to such an extent that Rudolph Weingartner, writing a summation of these debates for “The Journal of Philosophy,” noted that “almost every paper written on this question makes Hempel’s analysis of historical explanation its own starting point,” a statement that appears to be quite literally true. Rudolph H. Weingartner, “The Quarrel about Historical Explanation.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1961), 30.
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The covering law theorists19 supported a philosophical position
based on the principle of the unity of all scientific knowledge, with the ultimate
implication that such knowledge could be rendered, at least in linguistic terms,
objective. Furthermore, this position claimed that recognizing this unity (and
therefore adopting the scientific definition of knowledge) was fundamentally
important for allowing historical investigation to produce true statements, something
that could only be accomplished by adopting the logical approach of the sciences.20
“The general background of the debate…had always been the question whether, from
a methodological point of view, there is a point as one moves down the list [of the
academic disciplines, ordered by their “scientific status” and stretching from
theoretical physics to history] at which things really become quite different. In other
words, it was not historiography per se but the thesis of the unity of science that was
the real issue in the debate…It was believed that if the scientific nature of even
historiography could be demonstrated (by declaring one C.L.M. [covering-law-
model] variant or another valid for historiography), the positivists claim as to the
unity of all scientific and rational inquiry would have been substantiated.21”
For a significant majority of those involved with the issue, it
appears as if at least certain aspects of the covering law were essentially impossible to
refute. This is because when construed at its very weakest, the C.L.M. could be
19 They came to be known as “Hempelians”, and will sometimes be referred to as such. 20 Weingartner, “The Quarrel about Historical Explanation,” 38. 21 F. R. Ankersmit, “The Dilemma of Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Philosophy of History,” History and Theory, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1986), 5.
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understood as stating that historians, in the act of describing the past, implicitly rely
on their knowledge of certain types of universally applicable laws in order to describe
their subjects, a statement that is broad as to be essentially non-debatable. As it was
subjected to successive rounds of emendation and revision by both its supporters and
its critics, the C.L.M. gradually assumed just such a weakened form. Foremost among
these changes was the introduction of inductive explanation as logically valid.22 This
meant that, unlike the deductive necessity described in the C.L.M.’s original
formulation, in which an acceptable explanation required that the occurrence of the
event being described was logically necessary given the presence of the conditions or
factors that made up the explanandum, it was now acceptable to claim that the
collection of explanatory factors were merely sufficient for the event to have
occurred. As can be seen from this example, while certain elements of the covering-
law’s central tenets remained unscathed, its power was deeply diminished by these
types of changes.
A near perfect example of the type of theory that ultimately resulted
from this process can be seen in “Historical Explanation: the Problem of Covering
Laws,” by Maurice Mandelbaum. In it, Mandelbaum introduces the idea of “complex
events” that take place in specific circumstances as a result of a large number of
universal laws that, despite their individual explanatory power, cannot be combined
into larger rules governing the functioning of history. “The laws through which we
explain a particular event need not be laws which state a uniform sequence
concerning complex events of the type which we wish to explain. Rather, they may be
22 Alan Donagan, “Historical Explanation: The Popper-Hempel Theory Reconsidered.” History and Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1964), 7-9.
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laws which state uniform connections between two types of factors which are
contained within those complex events which we propose to explain…The law (or
laws) by means of which we explain a particular case is not (or surely need not be) a
law which ‘covers’ that case in the sense that the case itself is an instance of what has
been stated by the law. Rather, the case is explained by the law because those types of
factor with which the law is concerned are present in it.23” This, of course, appears
perfectly reasonable, and yet it removes a great deal of the logical threat that
Hempel’s discussion of unsatisfactory/unscientific explanations within history had
initially contained. This formulation of the C.L.M specifically does not require the
designation of a set of law-governed conditions “necessary” for the occurrence of an
event, but rather merely ones that are “sufficient” for the occurrence. This difference
negates the demand that any historical explanation be able to suffice as both a
predictive/explanatory apparatus, admitting that such explanation should more
accurately be considered a causally explicit description, one which definitely outlines
the existence of a causal link between the causes and laws being considered without
being able to prove it deductively from the basis of this description. Somewhat
ironically, such a description would actually closely correspond to Hempel’s original
designation of all existing historical explanations as “explanation sketches,” in which
general rules are referenced without being organized in a manner so as create an
absolutely logically compelling connection. Yet because such a system has now
essentially cut itself off from the logical possibility of ever attaining the type of “full”
23 Maurice Mandelbaum, “Historical Explanation: The Problem of ‘Covering Laws.’” History and Theory, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1961), 234-235.
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description called for by Hempel’s theory, the power of the covering-law model to
compel the creation of a properly scientific history seems to have escaped.
Quite apart from the work done by those who were, in general principle, friendly
to the C.L.M., a significant body of philosophical work was also created by those who
directly opposed the Hempelians. Because this group developed their views in
response to the more coordinated efforts of the covering-law theorists, the work of the
“Anti-Hempelians” assumed a wide variety of theoretical positions, lacking a clearly
articulated “manifesto” that could play a unifying role similar to that of “The
Function of General Laws.24” This heterogeneity was worsened by the fact that many
of the positions that writers found it necessary to adopt brought them into
increasingly uncharted territory, with the result that there was a great deal of
terminological “reinventing of the wheel” in the earlier stages of the anti-Hempelian
response. All of this makes it difficult to find an adequate model for describing the
varied intellectual currents that made up the field discussion during the period.
Because of this, I have found it useful to describe the work of the
“Anti-Hempelians” in terms of the general arguments that they used, rather then (for
the most part) through a discussion of the specific positions taken by various
individuals in their work. Despite the historical danger inherent in formulating what
might be construed as artificial categories, I believe that this approach is justified
because it allows me to pull out specific strands of thought as they developed within
the debate, a strategy that is necessary because of the widespread difficulties that a
number of authors had in articulating cohesive accounts of their theoretical positions.
24 Weingartner, “The Quarrel about Historical Explanation,” 30.
22
In the course of the multi-faceted discussion that surrounded the evolution of the
philosophy of history from its origins in the C.L.M. of the late 1940’s until the full-
blown focus on narrativity that characterized the field by early 1970’s, it was
commonplace for individual ideas to be pulled out of the context in which they
initially appeared, and be incorporated into the general sweep of the debate. As stated
before, each of these categories is more of an ideal-typical strand of logic rather than
an independently occurring position. As a result, a work by a single author would
often utilize more than one in order to formulate his argument, and all of them share
clear interconnections. Despite this, such separation enables a better perception of the
gradual emergence of the various strands of thought that would, by the end of the
1960, culminate in a substantive philosophical inquiry capable of standing on its own
outside of the confines of the covering law debates.
In many ways, the first and most intellectually independent25 position critical of the
C.L.M. was the product of a group of neo-Collingwoodians whose work was
primarily focused on the problems of individual psychology and agency in history,
particularly those raised by the attempt to include descriptions of intentioned actions
within the covering-law model of explanation. Ultimately, this challenge focused on
the arguments that surrounded the discussion of whether it was possible to create a
logically coherent explanatory structure based on conjectures made about the
motivations of single individuals in relation to the current understanding of the
situation in which they functioned. Hempelians in favor of this approach argued these
conjectures could be considered to take the form of a falsifiable hypothesis, in which
25 By this I mean that they demonstrated a clear and cohesive identity of their own.
23
a basic value-orientation could be “sketched” so that it would form a logically
verifiable whole in relation to the existing empirical data26. In opposition to this law-
derived approach to the explanation of individual historical actions, the
Collingwoodian camp’s approach was hermeneutical, positing that research allowed
knowledge that could provide increasing levels of empathy with the position of the
actor in the past. This knowledge aided the historian in recreating the situation of an
individual in his or her own mind, allowing a “reenactment” of the questions or
decisions made by an individual historical actor. Because this reenactment essentially
recreated the processes of the actor in the past, the historian could develop
“objective” knowledge of their subject, producing an “explanation based exclusively
on the ascertainment of a fact, that is, what I would have done under certain historical
circumstances.27”
The second strand of criticism initially appeared slightly after the criticism
put forward by the Neo-Collingwoodians. It was based on the argument that, while
the C.L.M. could be used to accurately analyze the individual claims and explanations
that were made in historical writing, this in no way invalidated the particularly
historical form of knowledge that was generated by the traditional practice of history.
This was because the basic descriptive and logical schemata embodied by the C.L.M.
was not the same as the one that formed the basis for historical inquiry. This position
understood Hempel’s position as being based on an underlying philosophical belief in
the existence of a single unified criterion of logical validity that was equally
26 This is based on the version of this claim found in Alan Donagan, “Historical Explanation: The Popper-Hempel Theory Reconsidered.” History and Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1964), especially pp. 17-23. 27Ibid, 8.
24
applicable to all forms of explanation. This “single although complex” explanatory
principle “consists in showing that the statement asserting the occurrence of an event
or other phenomenon to be explained follows by strict formal deduction (including
mathematical deduction) from one or more statements about initial conditions of the
system to which the laws apply and in which the phenomenon to be explained
occurs.28” This was, as many pointed out, a view of explanation drawn from the
methodology of the physical sciences, specifically a philosophically idealized model
of theoretical physics29. Faced with the aggressively positivistic aspects of this theory,
those in opposition began to elaborate an alternate conception of knowledge that was
fundamentally perspectival, exploring the ways in which different explanatory
schemes constructed a body of evidence in mutually exclusive and logically
incomparable manners. Just as science constituted an approach (or an example of an
approach) towards describing the world, these theorists argued that history also
exemplified such an explanatory model, one with a hold on meaning just as valid as
the empirical knowledge delivered by physics. According to Louis O. Mink, “each
mode [of knowledge] is self-justifying: critical analysis and intellectual advance are
possible within but only within each mode. In each case, the aim of ultimate
28 Louis O. Mink, “Historical Understanding”. Ed. Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob, and Richard T. Vann. (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987), 44. 29 In his article “Explanations in History and the Genetic Sciences,” W.B. Gallie articulates the problematic nature of the unquestioned assumption that the model of scientific explanation represented by physics is universal even with the “hard” sciences through an examination of the alternate (and he argues, more “historical”) form necessarily utilized by the genetic sciences, especially those dealing with evolutionary development of individual species over time. (W. B. Gallie, “Explanations in History and the Genetic Sciences.” Mind, Vol. 64, No. 254 (1955), 160-80)
25
comprehension leaves open the question of which theories, configurations, or
category systems will prove satisfactory by the standards relevant to the aim. Thus
while each from its own standpoints envisions a unity of knowledge, and regards the
others as errors… one must conclude that they constitute irreducible perspectives.30”
Those who employed arguments of this type tended to make two
closely related claims: science, with its “atomistic view of the world31” and its
theoretical/disciplinary focus on formulating general laws out of individual
occurrences32, had no reason to assume a logical or disciplinary precedence over the
variety of thought embodied by history, and that (as a necessary corollary to this)
history itself must be able to produce a type of knowledge or understanding of its
own. This uniquely “historical knowledge” therefore had to be of a variety that
functioned in a manner entirely differently from that being produced by the sciences.
The proponents of this position were particularly well situated to deflect the claims
made by those supporting the covering-law model because they had no logical need
to engage the latter in a full theoretical refutation. Instead they were free to accept
that the covering law model could provide an excellent description of how aspects of
history functioned, without admitting that it was capable of supplanting the unique
30 Louis O. Mink, historical understanding, 40. 31 A. R. Louch, “History as Narrative.” History and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1969), 60. 32 In an interesting note, Mandelbaum makes a side note that this experimentally driven focus, particularly in the way that it tends to ignore the unique in favor of generality, is not necessarily true for the entirety of what can rightfully be considered science. “Natural scientists too might be interested in particular events, such as the formation of a particular geological deposit, or the appearance of a new biological variety in a particular environment.” (Mendelbaum, “Historical explanation, the problem of covering laws,” 230)
26
form of inquiry that history represented; the two simply formed different (and
irreducible) methods of inquiry. As influentially argued by Arthur Danto, the mode of
analysis and investigation that makes up the functioning of historical thought is “so
different from that of formulating a comprehensive social theory that the former can
scarcely be conceived as preparatory to the latter, or the latter a completion of the
former. It is Hempel’s mistake, I think, to consider history a pre-science, attending to
the moment when it, too, can dazzle us with its proper set of laws. It is as though one
imagined that writing symphonies was the ultimate goal of every composer, and that
string-quartets were ‘sketches’ for symphonies.33”
Obviously, an argument that claims for history the right to its own unique brand
of knowledge must be supported by a detailed exposition of the nature of this
knowledge if it is to be accepted a logically conclusive. Therefore, in order to defend
this rejection of the C.L.M., a group of anti-hempelian philosophers of history
attempted to formulate a theoretical paradigm of historical functioning capable of
successfully articulate the modality of this historical knowledge. If such a project
were successful, it would allow history to escape its Hempelian description as
essentially a rough proto-science, and thereby prove history’s incapacity for
subsumption under the C.L.M. by shattering the validity of its central criticism. In
order to do this, the theoretical work produced in this period primarily, if not
exclusively, focused on the various aspects of the use of specifically “historical”
language, and more specifically on the way in which historians employed narrative
structures in order to organize and then relay the information that was produced by
33 Arthur C. Danto, “On Explanations in History,” Philosophy of Science, Vol 23. No.1 (1956), 20.
27
their research. This was widely understood to be the most promising path by which to
solve the vexing problem of “historical explanation” that had been raised by the
C.L.M., as well as the most obvious area in which to start a detailed explication of the
type of knowledge that historical writing did in fact produce.
In addition, this strategy also meshed well with a number of more
practical considerations. For one, a critical analysis of the C.L.M. makes it readily
apparent that its logical claims are weakest when being applied to historical
explanations as they are actually given in historical writing, rather than the arguments
considered in an ideal form. For instance, Hempel argues that, “The statement that the
Dust Bowl farmers migrate to California ‘because’ continual drought and sandstorms
render their existence increasingly precarious, and because California seems to them
to offer so much better living conditions. This explanation rests on some such
universal hypothesis as that populations will tend to migrate to regions which offer
better living conditions.34” But while such a general law can be inferred from such a
description of the motivations of the Dust Bowl farmers, it does not follow that what
a historian is actually doing in such a circumstance explaining their actions in order
to support or refute such a general law. This then suggests that the historian is in
reality engaged something fundamentally different than supposed by Hempel. Given
the nature of historical practice, the most obvious place to look for this alternate
grounding would be in relation to the narrative exposition of the past, the aspect of
history that make up the most prominent non-scientific part of its basic practice.
34 Hempel, “Function of general laws in history,” 41.
28
This approach also gained support from the fact that it closely coincided with a
number of previously existing descriptions of historical writing, most notably the
long-held and ill-defined conception of history as being situated somewhere between
an art and a science. 35
While a theoretical consideration of the importance of narrative form on the nature
of historical understanding began to appear in the context of the resurgent philosophy
of history as early as 1951,36 it was very much a child of its times, entirely formulated
as a response to the challenges posed by the C.L.M. As a result, much of this early
work shares that model’s basic conceptual framework, focusing almost exclusively on
questions of explanation as they were conceived in the context of scientific
hypothesis37. This is, of course, merely another way of stating that the earliest
attempts to provide a narrative philosophy of history emerged from the tradition of
analytical philosophy, a system of description that, as has been previously discussed,
tended to utilize logical analysis of particular linguistic claims to the exclusion of
almost all else, particularly the sociological or situational elements that might
reasonably be taken to make up a significant aspect of historical writing.
Among these early writers, historical narrative was primarily understood as a
collection of individual assertive or explanatory statements, arranged in a
35 Mink, Historical Understanding, 44-45. 36 “Mr. W.H. Walsh, in his introduction to the philosophy of history, points out that the historian goes beyond plain narrative and aims at not merely at saying what happened, but also at (in some sense) explaining it,” William Dray. “Explanatory Narrative in History.” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 4, No. 14 (1954), 24. 37 “Of course Mink, like Dray and Gallie, devoted himself to attacking the underlying assumption of Hempel’s article, that all claims of knowledge must- at least implicitly- have the same logical structure, but his arguments for ‘the autonomy of historical understanding’ inevitably were shaped by the position he was attacking.” Richard T. Vann, “Louis Mink’s Linguistic Turn.” History and Theory, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1987), 2.
29
chronological order and linked through both their focus on a single unifying subject,
and through a set of causal interrelationships. An influential element in this early
discussion was W.H. Walsh’s notion of “plain or significant” varieties of historical
narrative, the difference between which is the result of them having either “A) a
description of the facts restricted to a straightforward statement of what occurred, [or]
B) an account of them which brought out their connections.38” In “The logic of
Historical Narration,” Morton White based his argument on a reformulation of this
distinction, renaming the two (respectively) chronicle and history, and stating that
while a chronicle is “a conjunction of non-explanatory empirical statements which
expressly mention…[a] subject, and which report things that have been true of it at
different times,” (with the further explanation that by non-explanatory he means “one
that does not connect two statements of fact with a word like because”) because a
history “makes reference to explanatory connections, we may conceive of a history as
a logical conjunction of explanatory statements.39” In this manner, White brought
Walsh’s distinction into the actual work of historical writing, arguing that it was the
chronicle, and not the history, which should be understood as attempting to describe
“precisely what happened40” to an object in history. This meant that the definition of
history must include explanatory activity beyond merely recounting the causal chains
of the past. Despite this, the basic description of historical narrative is, in its
unquestioned assumption that the explanation of facts and events form the primary
38 Walsh, W. H. “‘Plain’ and ‘Significant’ Narrative in History.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 55, No. 11 (1958), 480. 39 Morton White, “Philosophy and history” in Philosophy and History, a Symposium. ed. Sidney Hook [New York]: New York UP, 1963. 5-6. 40 Walsh, “‘Plain’ and ‘Significant’ Narrative in History,” 480.
30
task of historical writing, clearly the product of a conceptual foundation that shares
many of the same basic positivistic beliefs as Hempel. Thus the goal of a history is
still understood as explanation—an attempt to provide a solution to a specific
question41.
It was this assumption that would be the focus of William Dray’s vital article
“Explanatory Narrative in History,” which appeared in the “Philosophical Quarterly”
in 1954. In this article, Dray argues that, by conceptualizing history as a connected
chain of causal claims, the covering-law model (and therefore, theorists like White)
misrepresented that type of explanation that history is concerned with providing. Dray
claims that this difference lies in the fact that scientific explanations are
fundamentally concerned with “why something happened,” while historical narratives
focus on an explanation of “how something could have happened.42” Utilizing this
description, Dray rejects the C.L.M.’s instance that a full explanation must detail why
something necessarily occurred, claiming that merely by elucidating the conditions
that enabled an event to occur, its occurrence has been explained. Dray then goes on
41 This brief description is, in many ways, unfair to the breath of White’s thinking on the subject. The rest of the essay deals with the extent to which judgments based on a non-logical determination of value provide much of the background for the descriptive approach to the past that every historian employs, climaxing with the argument that “Many historians, I submit, try to colligate features which they select from among the known features as colligable, on the basis of a value judgment as to their importance. In other words, even if we should be able to characterize the relationship between colligating feature and colligated features [that is, between the central organizing focus of a history, and the individual facts that are collected in the investigation of this feature] as ‘objective,’ even if we should hold that the logical relation between the statement attributing the colligating features and the colligated features is like that of superior scientific statement to its conforming data or the data it explains, the choice of the data to be colligated will often rest on a value judgment that will sometimes be relative to differing standards of importance.” (White, “philosophy and history,” 23.) 42 Dray, “Explanatory Narrative in History,” 20.
31
to link this type of explanation with history, and more particularly, with historical
narrative. In characterizing this link, Dray writes, “When asked for an explanation of
a certain event or state of affairs, the historian often responds by telling a story. The
claim I wish to make is that the narrative he offers sometimes explains in the ‘how’
rather than the ‘why’ sense.43” Although Dray admits that this type of explanation
might then raise the question of ‘why’ a certain event took place, this is not necessary
in order for the historian to accurately recount the past in a way that explains the
course that it took, allowing events that might appear to be impossible to be accepted
by the reader through the introduction of the conditions that enabled the possibility,
but not necessity, of their occurrence. “An historical explanation may thus amount to
telling the story of what actually happened, and telling it in such a way that various
transitions [are acceptable]…. Answers to likely objections are built into the
narrative, which may thus have explanatory force…44” With this depiction, Dray
formulated the first account of the explanatory force of historical narrative that did
not describe it as a connection of scientifically causal statements embedded within the
structure of a narrative/descriptive form, but allowed it a fundamentally different
logic of explanation. In this effort he was not alone; the following years saw the
publishing of articles like W.B. Gallie’s “Explanations in history and the Genetic
Sciences,” (1955) and Arthur C. Danto’s “On Explanations in History,” (1956) both
of which made arguments to similar effect, with Gallie arguing that history shared a
similar form of explanation to change-charting tracing of the genetic sciences, and
43 Ibid, pg 24. 44 Ibid., pg 27
32
Danto arguing that historians were fundamentally engaged with “narrative models, or
‘true stories.’ 45”
Although a clear process of elaboration and development can be seen in the
state of the discussion of narrative over the next decade, its primary focus consistently
remained the refutation of the still dominant C.L.M., with the result that much of this
work remained tethered to a basic framework (namely, the constant need to
summarize and refute the law, and an accompanying inability to satisfactorily build
off the increasingly complex position that had developed) that seems to have made
attaining investigative independence difficult if not impossible. It was the tenacity of
this linkage that most likely explains the retarded development of a clear delineation
of the questions surrounding narrative as a field of inquiry in its own right, making it
difficult to formulate the kind of terminological and conceptual unity that is so vital
for the efficient exploration of a new area of thought. It was only after the popularity
of the covering-law model began to fade in the mid sixties that these issues began to
be taken up as an independent issue, as writers such as W.B. Gallie, A.R. Louch,
Frederick A. Olafson, and most notably, Louis. O. Mink produced a body of work
that set the stage for much of the “linguistic turn.”
Fascinatingly, what made this independence possible was not the
result of logical success by the narrativists in their arguments against the Hempelians,
but general changes that were occurring in the larger worlds of philosophy and
academia. For one, after nearly a decade of debate, the subject had lost much of its
intellectual excitement. Even the editors of History and Theory, a recently founded
45 Danto, Arthur C. “On Explanations in History.” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No.
1 (1956), 25.
33
journal devoted almost entirely to this type of issue, “decided that the argument was
exhausted except as a first-year seminar exercise for graduate students.46” In addition,
outside of the small world of the philosophy of history, larger theoretical events did
much to reduce both the power and intellectual attractiveness of the C.L.M. The most
important of these was the massive changes that occurred in the philosophy of science
following the1962 publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. As a result of this widely read and hugely influential text, “It suddenly
became the philosophical fashion to view science historically rather than logically, as
an evolving system rather than a timeless calculus, as something whose shifts over
time are philosophically more central to its essence than the view of it as timeless
edifice of theories, related to laws that in turn were related to observation
sentences…47” As a result of these developments, the Hempelian position fell to an
assault from what was, as it were, the rear, and quickly came to be viewed as
increasingly irrelevant to the functioning of either the philosophy of history or the
philosophy of science. Looking at the record, the disappearance of the Covering-Law
seems less a retreat than a collapse. Rather than falling to an adversary that
functioned within the same basic descriptive field in which it operated, Kuhn’s
epochal text rendered the basic terms on which the theory was founded meaningless.
“It just stopped being relevant, the way the whole philosophy of history it defined
46 Richard, T. Vann, “Turning linguistic” in Ankersmit, Frank, and Hans Kellner, eds. A New Philosophy of History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995, 48. 47 Arthur Danto, The Body/body Problem: Selected Essays. Berkeley: University of California, 1999,166.
34
stopped being. It was replaced with a different set of questions, a world in effect, into
which it no longer fit.48”
In the rapid expansion of narrative theory that occurred after the
decline of the Hempelians, there were two general approaches towards the question of
narrativity. The first and in many ways more traditional of these approaches is
epitomized by White and Danto, whose work reflected a significantly closer
connection to the larger concerns of analytical philosophy/analytical philosophy of
science than can be found among the more “literary” theorists of historical narrativity.
Both men published their primary texts on this subject in 1965, and in both cases,
they attempted to formulate a middle position, one that would admit the existence of a
specifically historical type of knowledge while still justifying it within the basic
conceptual mechanisms that had served as the foundations for the Hempelian
approach. As a result, the works were more concerned with bridging the gaps that had
developed between the various positions in the field than with developing a
philosophy of history specifically concerned with the questions of narrative.
“Danto [did] much to narrow the gap between the two as much as possible, by
pointing out that we always explain events under a certain description of them and
that one of the historian’s most fascinating tasks is therefore to describe the past in
such a way that we can feed those descriptions into the machinery of the covering-
laws that we have at our disposal.49” Unsurprisingly given the impeccable
philosophical credentials of both White and Danto, both of these works still retain
48 ibid, 182. 49 Ankersmit, F. R. “The Dilemma of Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Philosophy of History.” History and Theory, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1986), 12.
35
much of their logical persuasiveness. Yet despite this, the approach that they took to
the consideration of history did not seem to match the theoretical currents of its
time50, and their works did influence later developments to as great an extent as some
of the other figures working in the field at the same time.
A significant alternative to this approach can be seen in the work of Gallie,
Louch, and Mink. This group primarily relied on a method of analysis that was based
on the argument that, to use Gallie’s words, most philosophies of history “persistently
confuse delineations and analyses of historical understanding with the problem of its
vindication, the problem of how historical theses should be tested, and of how the
subjective bias of particular writers should be overcome.51” By focusing their efforts
on the examination of this first category, these writers produced a body of theory that
increasingly concerned itself with questions surrounding the implications of the
literary and narrative structures of historical accounts. Particularly important in this
regard was a shift in the emphasis from historical explanation to historical
understanding or comprehension. Closely related to the “perspectivist” conceptions of
knowledge supported by Danto and Mink, this approach focused on the actual ways
in which the information contained by historical writing is transmitted to its readers,
an investigation that served to highlight the importance of narrative form as the
carrier of this information. A particularly telling argument in this regard was made by
Mink when he pointed out that, unlike empirical scientists who rely on their ability to
utilize the results of fellow-researchers without replicating their experiments or even
50 Given the fate of the covering law model, Danto’s efforts to resuscitate it did little to make the case for his continued relevance. 51 Gallie, “The Historical Understanding,” 149.
36
needing to follow the processes by which the knowledge embedded in the conclusion
was produced, the conclusions reached by historical research do no such thing; they
are fundamentally “non-detachable,” requiring the reader to follow the entirety of an
account in order to fully grasp its historical “argument.” “The significant conclusions,
one might say, are ingredient in the argument itself, not merely in the sense that they
are scattered throughout the text but in the sense that they are represented by the
narrative order itself. As ingredient conclusions they are exhibited rather then
demonstrated.52” While the concept of historical narratives containing irreducible
ingredient conclusions can be understood as being logically derived from Dray’s
arguments about the specific type of explanation that is fulfilled by historical writing,
the manner in which Mink formulated this claim specifically positions historical
narratives as the fundamental carrier of historical information by means of their
nature as narratives.
The importance of the conceptual shift represented by this last point cannot
be overstated. Unlike previous theorists of historical narrative like Morton White,
who basically considered narratives to consist of a large-scale configuration of
individual causal or factual statements, this approach began to consider narratives as
exhibiting structural properties that existed at the level of the historical account as a
whole. This effort required an analysis of historical writing that operated at
increasingly large scales, abandoning the theoretical dissection of individual claims or
minute chronicles that had provided the basic theatre of activity for earlier
philosophers of history. This movement towards an analysis of the functioning of
52 Mink, Historical Understanding, 79.
37
historical works as a whole proved to be a vital influence on the development of a
linguistically oriented historiography, for the first time formulating a description of
historical writing that made it possible for individuals to cross disciplinary lines,
utilizing the increasingly well-developed theoretical resources of semiotics, literary
theory, and anthropology in order to redevelop the basic problematic of the
philosophy of history. In his account of this period, Richard T. Vann described this
change as crucial, stating, “Once history is seen as literature, questions of genre,
plotting and the fundamental organizing principles of historiography come to the fore.
These had been systematically repressed in the so-called analytical philosophy of
history, which like all analysis tended to decompose historical discourse into its
smallest intelligible units, like the two sentence narrative. But analysis-- especially
analysis of language and narrative-- evoked, dialectically, a recurrence of
‘speculative’ or substantive philosophy of history.53”
As narratives began to be analyzed as wholes in this manner, elements of
linguistic structure that had previously been overlooked began to come to the fore.
This trend is present as early as Gallie’s “The Historical Understanding,” which was
published in 1963, and only grew more pronounced as the decade went on. Not yet
utilizing the type of complex structural analysis that would later become the keystone
of the linguistic turn, Gallie began to consider the narrative logic of historical writing
through his identification of its basic mechanics with those of a story. While this
inherently obvious comparison had appeared before, few had previously gone below
its surface, attempting to fully articulate the implications of this connection. Gallie
53 Vann, “Turning Linguistic,” 61.
38
posited that “The sense of “following” -- following to a conclusion -- that applies to
stories is of an altogether different kind from the sense of following an argument so
that we can see that its conclusion follows54.” Gallie argued that the primary criterion
of the conclusion to a properly structured story is the acceptability of the final
situation that it depicts in its relation to rest of the story. This point of view is
therefore fundamentally retrospective, introducing a new element of non-
chronological structuring. Considered from the perspective of its conclusion, a story
is able to accept an almost unlimited number of events that were, from the perspective
of a first-time reader, utterly unexpected, as long as these events eventually prove to
be logically coherent within the narrative structure of the account as a whole. This
logic therefore completely reorients the connections of causality as they exist within a
scientific explanation. “We should notice here that perhaps of greater importance for
stories than the predictability relation between events is the converse relation which
enables us to see, not indeed that some earlier event necessitated a later one, but that a
later event required, as its necessary condition, some earlier one.55” Applied to the
construction of a historical narrative, the full implications of this insight form the
undeniable basis of the linguistic turn. They recognize, for the first time, that there
exists in historical writing a level of achronic relationships that lie beneath the basic
surface of the text, structural elements that, without necessarily adhering directly in
the past itself, are inextricably linked to the basic process of the creation of a
descriptive narrative of these events.
54 Gallie, “The Historical Understanding,” 152. 55 Ibid, p.153
39
In making this shift, Gallie’s argument can also be seen as the first stage in
the identification of the epistemological issues that would, in the course of the
“linguistic turn,” assume an increasingly central place in the philosophy of history. At
its most basic level, this problem consists of justifying the belief in the ability of
historical writing to transmit valid knowledge about the past, given the fact that this
knowledge is both contained in and created by the relationships that exist among its
constituent data, relationships that are at least partially dependent on the narrative
logics of the story. Perhaps because he had not explored the full ramifications of his
introduction of literary elements into the structure of historical writing, Gallie himself
found the solution to this issue fairly easily. Identifying the primary modality of the
relationship between the reader and the narrative to be that of following, his account
of narratives stresses their ability to render contingent events followable, and
therefore meaningful, in the eyes of the reader56. The historian then merely organizes
what already exists, the story that he narrates reflects the actual inherent structure of
the area of history to which it refers. Gallie describes this inherent structure as a trend
within the data of the past. “A trend or tendency is something that we see gradually
disclosed through a succession of events; it is something that belongs to the events
which we are following and no others; it is, so to speak, a pattern-quality of those
56 Describing narrative in this way also allowed Gallie to extent a peace branch to the partisans of the CLM by admitting that their general laws could be used to formulate a description capable of providing a more nuanced understanding to the reader. “Appling generalities so as to be able to follow a developing performance or game or story or history is thus basically different from applying them with a view to deducing, and in particular predicting, some future event…but in history, much as in science, explanations have a positive role: not only do they allow the historian to classify, and clarify and endorse facts which at first seem puzzling or improbable, they help him to enlarge his vision of the context and potential relevance of particular actions and episodes.” (Ibid, 184.)
40
particular events. It would thus seem that our appreciation of any historical trend must
depend upon, or be a resultant of, our following a particular narrative, a narrative of
events which happen to be arranged in such a way that, roughly speaking, they move
in some easily described relation to some fixed point of reference.57”
This style of narrative theorizing was, in many ways, brought to its logical
conclusion in the work of Louis O. Mink. While a significant contributor to the
debate surrounding narrative theory throughout the sixties, Mink’s most significant
contributions came during the end of the decade and continued through the first half
of the seventies. Building from Gallie’s model, in “History and Fiction as Modes of
Comprehension,” Mink heavily criticized the idea that the act of following was the
basic mode of interaction with an historical account, convincingly arguing that no
reader of history is actually ignorant of the eventual conclusion of the account by
point out they must have some idea of how it turned out merely through their
understanding of their position in the present. Having rejected this description, Mink
goes on to argue that “The difference between following a story and having followed
a story is more than the incidental difference between present experience and past
experience…in the case of human actions and changes, to know an event by
retrospection is categorically, not incidentally, different from knowing it by
prediction or anticipation.58” Narratives, by bringing together a number of individual
pieces of information in a structure that is comprehensible as a whole, serves as
means by which humans can obtain a sense of understanding of the past. This
understanding, Mink argues, is not the result of the ability to logically trace an
57 ibid, 172. 58 Mink, Historical Understanding, pg 48.
41
outcome through a connected series of causal chains, but rather of “grasping together
in a single mental act things which are not experienced together, or even capable of
being so experienced, because they are separated by time, space, or logical kind.59”
The basic outlines of a historical narrative are always already known--even if a new
account may drastically change the nature of the understanding that the reader had
previously held, it is still understood as another piece in an even larger whole, the
totality making up the basic understanding of past as it relates to the present. Mink’s
vital insight is that despite the fact that a narrative account functions diachronically,
moving through time event by event, the understanding of the past is, at least in
certain aspects, fundamentally synchronic. The narrative structuring of the story
allows it to attain the kind of unity that this understanding requires, and it is the goal
of historical writing to formulate such a cohesive whole out of the disparate
contingencies that exist as evidence. “In the configurational comprehension of a
story which one has followed, the end is connected with the promise of the beginning,
as well as the beginning with the promise of the end, and the necessity of the
backward references cancels out, so to speak, the contingency of the forward
references. To comprehend temporal succession means to think of it in both
directions at once, and then time is no longer the river which bears us along but the
river in aerial view, upstream and downstream seen in a single survey.60”
This type of description was, without the theoretical tools derived from a more
methodical study of the structure of the literary elements, essentially as far as the
narrative theory that existed before the linguistic turn could push its analysis. Without
59 ibid, 49. 60 Ibid, 57.
42
this, all that was left was the realization of the radical destabilization that these
theoretical developments had unwittingly introduced into the theoretical discourse.
By explicitly questioning the extent to which the ability of historical accounts to
explain the events of the past is a result of the manner in which they are structured at
a linguistic and literary level, the narrativists had in a large part resurrected the long-
vanished specter of historical relativism. However, where that earlier period of doubt
had primarily been focused on the impossibility of a purely objective relationship to
the past, the epistemological challenge unveiled by Mink was based on far more
rigorously considered problems, most importantly those concerning the possible
sufficiency of the connection between the historical text and the past “itself.” Mink
described this problem as a result of “an incompatibility between our implicit
presupposition of what historical narratives are about, and our conscious belief that
the formal structure of a narrative is constructed rather then discovered,61” and it was
a logical problem whose solution he could not find. Indeed, it was this very insight
that would form the fulcrum of the radical textuality of the linguistic turn, a
development that was for the most part a development of a group of scholars (most
notably Hayden White) who had begun to make serious inroads into the philosophy
of history during the period in which Mink was codifying his understanding of the
full extent of this problem.
Although the theories produced in the context of the linguistic turn would provide
much of the content for the philosophy of history during the next three decades, it is
vital to note the immense influence exerted on the structure of the field by the
61 Ibid, 201.
43
Hempelian, Analytic, and Narrativist philosophers of history of 1950’s and 1960’s.
By creating a significant and self-sustaining discourse, complete with a disciplinary
structure that allowed it to function independently of its neighbors, this uniquely
Anglo-American tradition created the philosophy of history as clearly defined field of
inquiry in a manner unlike anywhere else. This is not to say that France, for instance,
did not have philosophers who thought about history and wrote about history. But
French academic life did not have a philosophy of history, and this type of difference
in intellectual categorization will always have an enormous effect on the structure of
an inquiry. In order to understand the functioning of a discourse, it is vital to
understand the configuration of its field. In order to understand the configuration of a
field, it is necessary to trace the conditions under which this field developed. The
process of development, created by both the intellectual achievements and discursive
structuring of the Anglo-American philosophy of history, created the conditions that
enabled many of the most explosive developments of the linguistic turn.
44
Chapter Two- The Rhetorical Moment of Hayden White
One of the defining features of the philosophy of history as it moved through
the seventies and eighties was the extraordinary increase that could be seen in the
diversity and reach of its basic discursive constitution. Expanding far beyond the
tightly focused and theoretically consistent debates that had initially characterized the
field during the 1950’s and 60’s, the “new” historiographic theory of the seventies
actively participated in the growing academic trend towards an increasingly
interdisciplinary model of inquiry that came to be the hallmark of the various bodies
of literary and (post-)structuralist theory then in the process of attaining their present
day position within the academy. As always when discussing academic
developments, a clear indication of these processes can be seen in changes such as the
shift of journals in which the debate was played out. While History and Theory
continued to remain central to the discussion, publications such as Diacritics, New
Literary Theory, and in particular Clio began to play an increasingly important role in
presenting the cutting edge of historiographic writing, almost entirely replacing the
philosophical journals that had previously served a similar function. Changes such as
these, of which it would be possible to give any number of other examples, indicate
the beginning of a pronounced shift in the paradigmatic formation of the philosophy
of history, one that would come to alter the framework of conceptual and disciplinary
connections by which the goals, intellectual style, and academic position that
structured the field were constituted.
45
Within this process, the work of Hayden White played an absolutely vital
role, becoming a significant influence on a number of developments that helped
initiate these changes. In the body of work that he produced during the seventies,
developments within the philosophy of history reached a point of inflection, one
marking a clear transition in the type of the problems that made up its primary
concerns, as well as the mode of analysis used to consider them. As a result of (and in
the context of) these changes, the position held by the philosophy of history in the
disciplinary structures of the Anglo-American academy underwent a significant
reorientation, altering the discursive fields to which it was understood to be linked
and, as a result, significantly expanding its importance in relation to both the
historical profession and the humanities in general. It is important to consider these
changes as a complex of events in which a number of factors, reflecting both the work
of individuals as well as larger intellectual and cultural trends, all functioned and
developed in close conjunction, with the result being that one cannot claim absolute
causal precedent for any individual factor. Although it is crucial not to downplay the
influence of this general context, it is also important to realize the extent to which
preexisting trends are capable of being vitalized by the application of a significant
historical force, without which they most likely would not have taken on the form in
which they came to prominence. This was precisely the effect of Hayden White’s
writing, and if any consideration of the impact of his work must admit that it was well
situated to gain support from its context, it must also be said that it brilliantly
positioned itself within this context, and that its ability to do so is an indication of its
originality, rhetorical forcefulness, and theoretical cohesion. Although the claims for
46
its revolutionary importance within the historical discipline have often been
somewhat overstated among the (still) relatively insular community that can be
counted as both active historians and consumers of the philosophy of history,62 it is
absolutely correct (as can be seen in any set of recollections by current philosophers
of history) to describe White’s work as the single most important Anglo-American
influence on the evolution of the linguistic or post-modern conception of history63,
along with the critical historiographic theory that goes along with it.
Theoretical Interlude
Before entering into a more detailed discussion of the writings of Hayden
White, it is necessary to elaborate some of the considerations that provide the
justification for the analytical style that has been adopted in this thesis, as well as for
the ultimate purpose to which this analysis will be put. My discussion of the
“Philosophy of History” (or “Metahistorical Theory” or “Historiographic theory,”
etc.) is focused on two closely related goals. I am attempting to describe the evolution
of the field by tracking the ways in which the theoretical positions held by those
engaged in the discussion changed over time, while simultaneously dealing with the
products created by this constant progression as independent objects in their own
right, complex texts with logical structures fully capable of making compelling
62 In “The reception of Hayden White,” Richard T. Vann notes that while White is “perhaps the most widely quoted historian of our time...historians have almost entirely tuned out, especially historians in the United States.” Richard T. Vann, “The Reception of Hayden White.” History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1998), 148. 63 This can be seen clearly in “Encounters: The Philosophy of History after Postmodernism,” a collection of interviews with notable philosophers of history, in which almost every single author acknowledges White as a major influence on both their work and the field in general.” Ewa Domanska, Encounters: Philosophy of History after Postmodernism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
47
suggestions about the very processes (i.e. historical reality) in which my account
attempts to situate them. My analysis pulls in both directions, and this tension is
perhaps inherent in my intention to produce both an historical account of the
philosophy of history, as well as piece of theory that is in good measure built on the
legacy of this philosophy. Ultimately, my attempt to produce an historical account
with this double focus is predicated on my belief that such a focus is necessary in
order to accurately deal with either, and that ignoring either element in an analysis of
the area under discussion would be to invite, if not necessitate, systematic distortions
in any attempt to garner a useful understanding.
For the most part, the descriptive system that I will use is based on a
generalized acceptance of the concept of cultural/linguistic discourse as it currently
exists within the academy. Because this understanding has been developed as a
response to the work of a number of thinkers, I will briefly describe its basic ideas
without necessarily recounting the lengthy genealogy from which it emerged.
Essentially, this approach to the description of human meaning-activity64 argues that
such activity necessarily takes place within a general linguistic/semiotic framework
that determines what can and cannot be said meaningfully. To put it another way, this
activity determines the basic rules that govern how and in what way a statement can
have meaning. In many ways, the basic makeup of such a discursive field can also be
considered to represent a “logic” or grammar of a specific type. These systems
develop according to the pressures of the specific historical conditions in which they
64 A definition that can quite easily be expanded to include all human activity. Luckily, because this thesis is dealing with a body academic writing which most definitely fits even the most stringent definition of a meaning-producing activity, it is possible to avoid the messy problems provoked by this expansion.
48
function, and they are able to change as the individuals who function within them
shift and push at their boundaries in an effort to better describe and/or control the
changing world in which they live.
Furthermore, these meaning systems do not function in isolation. Rather, they
are connected to each other in complex configurations, the exact dynamics between
which are dependent on the unique manner by which the system(s) originally
developed. To quote J.G.A Pocock, who offers a magnificent description of this
conceptualization:
A complex plural society will speak a complex plural
language; or rather, a plurality of specialized languages, each carryings
its own biases as to the definition and distribution of authority, will be
seen converging to form a highly complex language, in which many
paradigmatic structures exist simultaneously, debate goes on as
between them, individual terms and concepts migrate from one
structure to another, altering some of their implications and retaining
others, and the processes of change within language considered as a
social instrument can be imagined as beginning. Add to all this the
presence of a variety of specialized intellectuals, making second order
statements of many different kinds in explanation of the languages or
languages they find to be in use, and we shall have some image of the
richness of texture to be discovered…65
65 Pocock, J. G. A. Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History. New York: Atheneum, 1971, 22.
49
What this description does not quite manage to provide (perhaps because of its focus
on a specifically political language) is a proper description of the complexities of the
interrelation between various discursive communities. It can help to imagine each
such structure as a complex system of ever-changing connections. While following its
own internal dynamics, these structures are also constantly being affected by their
connections to the surrounding world. These connections can take forms both
personal (through the multifaceted socio-linguistic identities of the individuals whose
existence makes up the discursive community being described) and cultural (through
the stated or unstated connections that such a system necessarily has to its
surroundings by dint of its position of knowledge/power/tradition in relation to the
wider sphere in which it functions). Each of these small-scale systems takes its place
within a larger system66 that then orients itself within or amidst still larger systems.
An excellent example of the “nesting” quality of these systems can be seen in the
intellectual system of academic history as practiced at American universities. The
practitioners of this discipline are university educated professionals (which carries a
set of cultural connotations and orientations, and is a cultural system/discursive
community of its own) while still remaining individuals that can be part of other
systems (for instance, communist-party members or volleyball enthusiasts). The
discipline is also part of a broader system of the social sciences/humanities, and a still
broader system that is the American university system (although it is important to
note that in this example, the modality of the relationship existent at one level, for
instance the relationships between history and the humanities, is not necessarily
66 Although in a manner that still allows it to maintain or develop connections, based on the unique path of its historical development, with any number of other systems.
50
replicated at the level of the relationship between the humanities and the university
system).
In addition to the specific uses of language created by specialized discursive
communities, a final variety of complexity is created by the fact that the great
majority of these communities function by means of the use of the standard, non-
technical vocabulary of every-day speech. As a result of this, the specific vocabulary
of communities must also be considered as it exists within a civilization considered at
the highest level, in which various types of symbolic activities and concepts, tapping
into various aspects of the national or cultural past, are also able to exert significant
force on linguistic functioning. Within such an open system, it is entirely common for
words or concepts to change in meaning or implication within the common cultural
parlance, therefore creating a secondary level of linguistic complexity that operates
behind the supposedly univocal functioning of a single plane of discourse. This type
of associative connection can operate at both the level of individual words, as well as
more complex concepts. Describing these conceptual linkages, Louis Mink wrote that
“Our experience, thought, and discourse incorporate and reveal to analysis complex
conceptual systems which function as a priori, even though, unlike Kant’s categories,
they may change over time and thus sustain different styles of
rationality...Philosophical problems occur when we believe that the two concepts
ought to be linked through a third but can’t say how; or when it is discovered that a
concept is linked both to another and to a third which excludes the second; or when
two concepts which seemed to be directly linked are confronted with an item of
experience which instances one but not the other, or in general when we try to pass
51
from one conceptual area to another (consider “psycho-somatic” medicine) and find
the bridges down, or defended, or just unmapped.” 67 These types of more complex
conceptual linkages, functioning in much the same way as those associated more
directly to a single word, only add to the intricacy of the connections contained by the
historical field.
All of this discussion is, however, only a broad outlining of the types of
relationships that can be understood to exist within the historical field as it is
conceptualized using this descriptive framework. The difficult aspect of utilizing this
method is, of course, attempting to fit the rather abstract vocabulary that it provides to
the actual historical patterns under consideration, a task made more difficult by the
subtly with which some connections are made, and the complexities inherent in any
system comprised of so many independently active and vitally interconnected
components. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this attempt at capturing the
modalities of this systemic change is once again provided by the double focus that
was touched on earlier. The various meaning-systems, constructed with a general
rhetorical-logical paradigm, are constantly engaged in the production of their own
specialized knowledge, one that is based on the development, continued to the full
possible extent, of the options made available by the basic configuration of the field.
Because the boundaries that form this configuration are necessary to ensure a shared
vocabulary and therefore a shared ability to solve technical problems, as a general
rule this discursive foundation functions as a set of presuppositions that is not actively
questioned or considered by those within the field. At the same time the field is being
67 Louis O. Mink, Historical Understanding, 124.
52
developed according to the boundaries provided by this set of extra-logical precepts68,
its basic nature is also being changed through the transformations undergone in
relation to other knowledge fields. While the effect of these changing relationship
differs based on the situation at hand69, such change will always make a significant
impact of some sort, and can in fact quite easily be responsible for the complete
transformation of the logic structures of a given field. In addition, a field is of course
also fully capable of being revolutionized from the inside70.
Prior to this point, my description of the development of the Philosophy of
History has been confined to what could be considered a single discursive field, one
in which the basic logical structure remains fairly unified because of the relatively
homogeneous style/position of those engaged in the debate. Although the process by
which the Kuhn-influenced historicization of scientific thought undercut the viability
of the Hempelian covering-law model can be considered an example of a significant
change within the field, this primarily resulted from the effect of the alteration made
to the relationship between the philosophy of history and the philosophy of science.
The series of discursive developments that lead to this change were therefore
68 In this case, they are extra-logical with respect to the functioning of the field. Because they serve as the preconditions for the possibility of functioning within the field, the field’s logical structure does not (at least usually) apply to them. This is essentially Hume’s basic statement concerning the impossibility of formulating a conceptual system that does not have at least one presupposition that cannot be accounted for from within the system. 69 For instance, the force of tradition is such that it can maintain a specific developmental logic in relative isolation for a significant length of time. The perfect example of this would the long life of scholastic catholic theology, which continued functioning far after the conditions in which it developed had ceased. 70 In this case, the most obvious example is the concept of Kuhn’s paradigm shift, in which a sudden reorientation of a field is necessary due to sudden amassment of problematic factors within its purview, and the collapse of a previously solid discursive foundation.
53
primarily centered on the margins of the developments that this essay has been
tracking, and a full discussion of the mechanisms by which it occurred has been
elided in the interests of a more streamlined discussion. These changes had little
impact on the discursive identity of the philosophy of history itself, and therefore did
not make it necessary to change the basic description of this historical field that I
have provided. Despite the sudden disappearance of the Hempelian menace, the
philosophy of history primarily continued on as it had before, safely functioning
within a fairly stable set of discursive logic-structures. The work of Hayden White,
however, represented a distinct challenge to this relatively well-disciplined rhetorical
existence, eventually forcing a fundamental realignment of the discipline as a whole.
Therefore, any attempt to describe the full ramifications of his work must necessarily
engage in a description that must take into account these epistemic transformations,
requiring a more active consideration of the play of discursive meaning and position.
The Theory of the Seventies
Although Hayden White was a contributor to the philosophy of history during
the sixties, his primary impact as a theoretician is based on the arguments that were
first mapped out in “Metahistory,” published in 1973, and thereafter further
elaborated and restated in the group of articles collected in the book “Tropics of
Discourse,” published in 1978. In these works, White burst into the philosophy of
history in a manner unlike anyone since first Hempel published his article on the
“General Laws”. Unlike the scholars who had dominated the philosophy of history
since that initial furor, the majority of whom had developed their positions gradually
54
and (with the possible exception of Danto) fairly unsystematically, White’s
contribution was presented and received from the first as the sudden flowering of a
mature and coherent philosophy. This impression was aided by the fact that
Metahistory is a dense and lengthy work, the central argument of which is nothing
less than an unified field-theory claiming to elucidate the previously misunderstood
character of all historical writing, an argument supported by application of a broad
range of theoretical resources taken from disciplines outside of the standard purview
of the Anglo-American philosophers of history.
Read today, “Metahistory” still feels like an extraordinarily bold statement,
controversial to the point of aggression. Although ostensibly focused on an analysis
of the “Historical imagination in nineteenth century Europe,” the work carries a
theoretical payload that seems to provide the central motivation for its production.
“One of my principal aims, over and above that of identifying and interpreting the
main forms of historical consciousness in nineteenth-century Europe, has been to
establish the uniquely poetic elements in historiography and philosophy of history in
whatever age they were practiced…through the disclosure of the linguistic grounds
on which a given idea of history was constituted, I have attempted to establish the
ineluctably poetic nature of the historical work and to specify the prefigurative
element in a historical account by which its theoretical concepts were tacitly
sanctioned.71” White used the theoretical advantage provided by his grounding in
literary theory like a tactical weapon, approaching the central issues of the field by
means of a terminologically laden style that had the effecting of making much of the
71 White, Hayden. Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1975, XI.
55
previous discussion appear both outdated and misguided, unable to effectively
respond to the style in which his arguments were presented. In many ways its
appearance was, as articulated by Hans Kellner, “a political event, and its writing…a
political act.72” Far from being merely an apt characterization of the intensity of the
debate that White’s work generated among those with a stake in the field, Kellner’s
statement suggests an excellent viewpoint from which to begin a serious
consideration of the nature of White’s general project.
As has been argued by any number of theorists of language and discourse
(including, at a later date, White himself73), it is important to consider the ways in
which the structure of the relationships within a discursive field are effected by the
multivalent power-relations that exist between the various forces at play within the
system, struggles that ultimately center around conflicting definitions of the nature
and position of essential terms and boundaries within the discourse. By employing an
analysis that highlights the political implications of White’s work as it functioned
within the philosophy of history,74 it becomes possible to better capture the means by
which his discourse was capable of exerting such a significant effect on this field of
thought. Within such a theoretical field, logical thought is always logical thought of a
certain kind; it is the type of logic that has been established within the discourse, and
that currently governs its operation. The focus on a single type of logic is, however,
72 Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1989, 193. 73 For more of White’s discussion of the political aspects of theoretical/interperative activity, see his “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1982): 113-137. 74 A term that is here being used to designate both the theoretical content of the text as well as its presentation style.
56
only possible by the devaluation of other types of logical languages, languages which,
because of their connection to individual and conceptual elements that constitute the
discursive field, still function and exert influences within the functioning of this field.
As was described by Pocock’s schemata, an analysis of the political functioning of a
discursive area must be able to take into account this multiplicity of languages,
tracking the ways in which positions and power-relations are established by means of
reference to these different sources of logic and authority.
According to White, rhetoric is the study of the shift between discursive codes
that occurs within speech, and that act by which this switch can be accomplished is
that of troping. Troping represents “swerves in locution sanctioned neither by custom
nor logic…[a trope] is not only a deviation from one possible, proper meaning, but
also a deviation towards another meaning, conception, or ideal of what is right and
proper and true ‘in reality.’ Thus considered, tropics is both a movement from one
notion of the ways things are related to another notion, and a connection between
things so that they can be expressed in a language that takes account of the possibility
of their being expressed otherwise.”75 This understanding of discourse then, stresses
the fundamental situatedness of any logical system, or --to push the point even
further-- of any truth. This does not deny that a “truth”, a truly existing truth standing
firmly without any subjective scare-quotes, can exist, but that it must always be
justified in relation to the situation in which it has come into existence, and that its
status as a truth is always, must always, be up for debate in reference to changing
75 White, Hayden. “Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore”: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978, 2.
57
conditions.76 Applied to a strategy of historical description, this idea requires a
careful consideration of the position that White’s work was able to establish within
the philosophy of history, and the power-relationship with the rest of the field that
followed from this, a consideration that must focus on how the language that he used
to establish these relationships reworked the discursive field in which they were put
into operation. This then requires a close examination of the style in which, and to a
certain extent, by which he accomplished these conceptual and linguistic shifts,
focusing on how the structuring and presentation of his texts and arguments were
crucial aspects of his project, inextricable from the meaning for which they were
ostensibly the carriers.
This effort is made more complicated by the fact that White’s work is not only
politically and rhetorically astute in terms of its own functioning within the discursive
field, but that it also takes as its primary subject the importance of precisely this kind
of rhetorical movement within the linguistic structure of the historical field. The
difficulties involved in disentangling these two conceptually related but logically and
functionally separate levels within the work make it necessary to seriously reflect on
the proper means by which one should attempt its historical description, and raise a
number of more general questions surrounding the historical description of the self-
consciously “intellectual” works overall. In an effort to deal with these issues, I plan
76 In a an interview in 1993, White discussed the relationship between rhetoric and truth (and therefore discourse and truth) in particularly illuminating language. “Since Plato, the philosophers claimed that rhetoric is suspect, duplicitous, artificial, and that logic is natural. That is ridiculous! Plato was prejudiced against the Sophists because he was an idealist who believed in absolute truths. And rhetoric is based on a genuinely materialist conception of life; it is skeptical… The rhetorician knows that meaning is always being produced; that truth is produced, not found.” (Domanska, Encounters, 20)
58
to engage White’s work through a number of different approaches. At one level, I will
attempt a description in the style of what might be termed a traditional
“philosophical” or “intellectual” history, in which I will discuss White’s work in
terms of its “stated” content, considering these theoretical propositions in terms of the
logical frame in which they ostensibly situate themselves. In addition to this, I will
also engage in a more critical reading of White’s work, approaching the texts from an
angle deliberately designed to cut against what I interpret as his consciously utilized
rhetorical effects, unpacking the often veiled concerns that, once consciously
apprehended, provide a subtext capable of explaining the conceptual structure that
underlies the official logic of White’s stated position. I believe that this underlying
structure, rather than the more obvious arguments that function primarily on the
surface of the text, is responsible for providing the essential rhetorical force that
“Metahistory” was able to generate. Moreover, because of its importance in shaping
how White’s theory functioned within this discourse, and the position it was able to
assume, it is vital to understand this underlying conceptual structure in order to
accurately describe the full range of effects that White’s work would come to have on
the philosophy of history.
Although the basic postulates of White’s theory are now widely known, the
specificity of the views that he espoused during the period of the seventies in which
he published “Metahistory” and “Tropics of Discourse”, combined with the extent to
which these views have been subject to a number of changes since,77 makes it
77 These changes primarily took the form of a loosening of their originally concrete structure, so that much of the structuralist feel of the original theory has by now been lost. Perhaps the most obvious example of this change was the move away from
59
necessary to recount the state of his theoretical views as they were expressed in his
primary theoretical texts of the period. These texts consisted of the (essentially stand-
alone) essay “The poetics of history” that opens “Metahistory,” as well as the articles
“Interpretation in History” (1972-1973), “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact”
(1973), or “Historicism, History, and The Figurative Imagination” (1975), all of
which were later published (along with a number of others) in “The Tropics of
Discourse” (1978).
White’s approach to the theoretical description of historical writing is best
understood as consisting of several interconnected levels of argument, with a number
of more complex levels78 building from claims established by the preceding ones. The
foundation of this system is the argument, drawn from the “Narrativist” philosophy of
history discussed in the previous chapter, that the proper way in which to consider a
historical work is as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that
purports to be a model, or an icon, of past structures and processes in the interests of
explaining what they were by representing them.79” According to White, this verbal
structure can be separated into several different components. At the core of an
historical account exists its basic chronicle, which organizes the events of the
unprocessed historical field by placing them into simple chronological order.
However, this pure chronicle has no meaning in and of itself, because the unaccented
recounting of information has none of the structure required for providing such a
Tropes and towards a (deeply similar) focus on narrative that White made during the 80’s. (Domanska, Encounters, 56) 78 Because of the extensive support theoretical that many of these more complex levels required to function, few of them ever entered the general theoretical discourse beyond their inclusion in White’s work. 79 White, Metahistory, 2.
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meaning. Instead, this meaning is given to the events being described by the
historian’s decision to “emplot” them within a verbal structure that refers them to an
archetypal story form already existent in the general cultural context in which the
historian is working. “Considered as potential elements of a story, historical events
are value-neutral. Whether they find their place finally in a story that is tragic, comic,
romantic, or ironic…depends on the historian’s decision to configure them according
to the imperatives of one plot structure or mythos rather than another.”80
In order for an emplotment to generate meaning, historians must employ
figurative and descriptive language so as to refer the reader to these extra-textual plot
structures, providing clues over the course of the account that gradually reveal which
of these structures it should be tied to. According to White, the sense of
understanding and meaning that a historical account is able to create in its reader is a
result of its ability to provide this recognition, which occurs as the reader uncovers
the meaning implicit “behind” the otherwise contiguous and meaningless events that
form the subject matter of the history. “When he has perceived the class or type to
which the story he is reading belongs, he experiences the effect of having the events
in the story explained to him. He has at this point not only successfully followed the
story; he has grasped the point of it, “understood it as well.81”
While this argument still hews closely to the position held by the pre-existing
Narrativist theories of history, White differs from this earlier body of work by his
clear differentiation of “story” and “plot.” Narrativists like Mink were primarily
80 White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1978), 84. 81 White, Tropics of Discourse, 86.
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concerned with the already known “plot” of an account, the pre-followed sequence of
events that make the basic aspects of the history being narrated “already known,” and
thus able to be grasped-together and considered as a unified whole. Differing from
this approach, which ties the functioning of the synchronic elements in an historical
work to the readers’ familiarity with the period being described, White uses the
concept of “story” to designate meaning-structures that stand over and above the
events of any individual plot. These story-forms are archetypes, “general notions of
form that significant human situations must take,82” and they designate the variety of
meaningful narratives possible in a given culture. In this, White refers to a significant
tradition of literary theory that links the narrative possibilities of meaning in a given
situation to the way in which the nature of reality is understood in the
historical/cultural context, a nature of reality that can be seen clearly through the
representational strategies employed in the period.83 The historical narrative is
organized both at the level of plot84 and of figurative language so that it points the
reader to the story-type which it intends to elicit, cluing the reader in by means of
linguistic tips that function alongside the “facts” that make up the account. “Properly
understood, histories ought never to be read as unambiguous signs of the events they
report, but rather as symbolic structures, extended metaphors, that ‘liken’ the events
reported in them to some form with which we have already become familiar in our
82 Ibid. 83 White references Northrope Frye and Auerbach as two particularly notable influences on this aspect of his thought. Auerbach is particulary important for this point; his “Mimesis” is hugely important for White’s conceptualization of the full existential impact of representational strategy, as well as for providing an approach to textual work capable of exploring these strategies successfully. 84 That is, in the ways in which various elements of the plot are “tagged” to indicate their status as beginning, middle, end, denouement, climax, etc.
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literary culture… It functions as a symbol, rather than as a sign: which is to say that it
does not give us either a description or an icon of the thing it represents, but tells us
what images to look for in our culturally encoded experience in order to determine
how we should feel about the thing represented.85”
In a notable corollary, White also strongly emphasizes the extent to which the
requirement of formulating a cohesive narrative forces the historian to actively shape
the facts in order to have them correspond to such a story archetype. “The events are
made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and the
highlighting of others, by characterization, motific repetitions, variation of tone and
point of view, alternative descriptive strategies, and the like…86” White rejects the
possibility that any set of historical events could have an implicit meaning, because of
the fact that any given historical event could have a different emplotment in relation
to the part that it could play in an infinite number of possible historical accounts.87 He
concludes that the only reason that an historical event can be said to have a meaning
is as a result of its inclusion in the specific set of events that forms an historical
narrative, and that this meaning is therefore entirely the result of the emplotment.
This argument was supported by his (Barthes influenced) close readings of historical
texts, in which he picked apart the individual statements made in the course of a
historical narrative, examining them one by one in order to reveal the extent to which
they included stylistic and referential content whose inclusion was not justifiable in
85 White, Tropics of Discourse, 91. 86 White, Tropics of Discourse, 84. 87 “The same event can serve as a different kind of element of many historical stories, depending on the role it is assigned in a specific motific characterization of the set to which it belongs.” White, Metahistory, 7.
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terms of a strictly logical explanation, and was therefore only explainable by
reference to the story-archetype to which the author had connected his account by
means of its emplotment.88
In addition to the discussion of chronicle, plot, and story as elements within
historical writing, the other basic element of White’s theoretical work is his
conception of the philosophy of history. As was briefly mentioned in the preceding
chapter, the theoretical style of the Anglo-American philosophy of history that existed
between the 1940s and 1970s was, at least in part, formulated in direct opposition to
the so-called “speculative” philosophy of history. While still influential in some
quarters, this tradition of thought was generally rejected for abandoning the “proper”
historical task of describing and explaining the unique events of the past in favor of a
misguided focus on the objective system of rules that were presumed to govern this
function, therefore determining the meaning of historical events by allowing them to
be related to their ultimate telos. According to Danto, who discussed the
“speculative” philosophy of history in the opening chapter of his “Analytic
Philosophy of History,” “At all events, it should be clear that the expression ‘the
whole of history’ covers more than does ‘the whole of the past.’ It covers, as well, the
whole future…,89” an attempt at historical “prophecy” that he argues reflects a
fundamental logical flaw in any such theory.
In his criticism of this position, White turned the entire issue on its head by
shifting the central referent of history from the past “as it happened” to the text as it
88 White, Tropics of Discourse, 106-114. 89 Danto, Arthur C. The Analytical Philosophy of History, Cambridge University Press (1965), 3.
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was constructed, using the linguistically based arguments of the narrativists in order
to force a reconceptualization of the relationship between a piece of written history
and the past to which it refers. White would have agreed with Danto that the
“speculative philosophy of history” attempted to formulate rules governing the
functioning of history. His fundamental difference was his belief that such an attempt
was both possible and necessary, because there existed between the historical text and
the “actual” past the unbreachable divide of narrative emplotment. As a result, the
rules governing the functioning of history could and did exist, because history is a
human invention, the structure of which is shaped by the linguistic patterns
underlying its written construction. Although individual historical writers can appear
as if they are concerned only with describing a specific segment of the past, and not
with a larger attempt to define the rules governing the functioning of history, this
means only that they are implicitly referring to the philosophy of history embodied by
the mechanics of explanation already adopted by the historical discipline as a whole,
and not that such systematic consideration has been avoided altogether. Given this
logic, White concludes that the philosophies of history espoused by thinkers such as
Hegel or Marx differ only in degree from the explanatory style deemed properly
“historical” by the discipline. Therefore, the near universal rejection of thinkers of
this ilk by the mainstream of the historical profession cannot be based on any set of
logical arguments, and can only be supported by relying on considerations referring
to positions outside of the confines of the discursive field. “There are no extra-
ideological grounds on which to arbitrate among the conflicting conceptions of the
historical process and of historical knowledge…Since these conceptions have their
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origin in ethical[value-based] considerations, the assumption of a given
epistemological position by which to judge their cognitive adequacy would itself
represent only another ethical choice.90”
The result of this line of consideration would prove to be one the most
definitive characteristics of White’s work. Building from this position, White claimed
that, far from being “value-neutral,” the general strategies of explanation employed
by the historical discipline should be understood as an ontological argument about the
nature of reality and society that had been reified into an unquestionable norm.
Furthermore, the acceptance of this ontological argument by the historical discipline
had a significant effect on the present. Because of the extent to which history is used
as the ultimate arbiter of reality in western society, the nature of reality described by
history has the ability to sharply circumscribe the range of meaningful possibilities of
human action. As a result of this power, White argues that the form that it has taken
must be analyzed in terms of its political and ideological functions for the power-
relationships present in the current day. “There does, in fact, appear to be an
irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality. That is to
say, simply because history is not a science, or is at best a proto-science with
specifically determinable nonscientific elements in its constitution, the very claim to
have discerned some kind of formal coherence in the historical record brings with it
theories of the nature of the historical world and of historical knowledge itself which
have ideological implications for attempts to understand ‘the present’ however this
present is defined…Commitment to a particular form of knowledge predetermines the
90 White, Metahistory, 26.
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kinds of generalizations one can make about the present world, the kinds of
knowledge one can have of it, and hence the kinds of projects one can legitimately
conceive for changing that present or for maintaining it in its present form
indefinitely.91
In “Metahistory,” White divides the issues that he had raised in this manner
into the categories of ideology and explanatory mechanism. The first of these
corresponds to the general moral understanding of human society held by the
historian, reflecting their political views and therefore their vision for what a “good
society” would look like. “They [ideologies] represent different attitudes with respect
to the possibility of reducing the study of society to a science and the desirability of
doing so; different notions of the lessons that the human sciences can teach; different
conceptions of the desirability of maintaining or changing the social status quo,
different conceptions of the direction that changes in the status quo ought to take and
the means of effecting such changes; and, finally different time orientations (an
orientation toward past, present, or future as the repository of paradigm of society’s
ideal form). 92
The explanatory principle refers to the general understanding that the historian
holds of the ways in which the historical field functions, essentially consisting of the
types of relationships that determine the connection between different events within
history. Within each category, there are a variety of choices available to the historian,
and like the type of story-form in which the historian emplots his facts, the
91 White, Metahistory, 21. 92 White, Metahistory, 24.
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ideological basis or explanatory mechanism by which he arranges his data makes up
one of the primary means by which the historian imparts unity and meaning onto the
otherwise chaotic field of historical data.
To quickly summarize, up to this point, I have retraced the logical steps by
which White argued that the primary task of an historical account is to provide
meaning to an inherently meaningless chronicle of events, a task that is accomplished
through the use of figurative language to describe the events so that the reader is able
to subsume them into the pre-existing meaning structures available in their general
culture. Furthermore, I have noted how White argued that every historical account
includes a philosophy of history that explains the basic types of relationships that
exist within an historical field, and that therefore determines the manner in which
events can be explained. Finally, I have discussed the manner in which White
connected both this explanatory mechanism and meaning-creating emplotment with
the ideological values that a given historian subscribes to, values that are closely
related to the general understanding that the historian holds of both the nature and the
possibility of change inherent to human society.
In “Metahistory,” White describes the three levels of historical writing
(ideology, explanatory mechanism, and story-archetype) as each consisting of four
categories, the nature of which he derives from various systematic thinkers within
linguistic theory and the social sciences.93 While White rejects the possibility of a
93 For ideology, White draws on the work of Karl Mannheim, and divides the level into the categories of Conservatism, Liberalism, Anarchism, and Radicals. For “explanatory strategy,” he uses the system of Stephen C. Pepper, who divides historical argument into Formist, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contexualist
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pre-determined connection between the choice of category made in one level with the
choice made in another, he “believes that the types of interpretive strategies are
structurally homogeneous with each other,” such that, for instance, a romantic
emplotment would tend to fit with an ideographic form of historical explanation and
an anarchistic mode of ideological implication.94 Because of these “structural
homologies,” a descriptive scheme that would appear to allow for a significant variety
of historical approaches (3 levels times 4 categories equals 12 possible combinations)
begins to take on an element of structural rigidity that does not necessarily follow
from the basic logic of White’s arguments.
In many ways, all of this is merely the supporting structure for White’s theory
of poetic tropes, a linguistically based form of analysis that, to a great extent,
provides the conceptual force that drives the system as a whole. According to White,
tropes exist as a result of the poetic content that is present in all writing, reflecting the
basic linguistic devices by which terms or objects can be related.95 These tropes are
taken to describe the means by which it is possible to characterize the underlying
structure of relationships as they exist within the historical account, relationships categories. For story-archetypes, he relies on the work of Stephen Frye, and divides the field into Romance, Tragedy, Satire, and Comedy.
94 White, Tropics of Discourse, 70. 95 An attempt to precisely define the nature of the trope is complicated by a certain level of ambiguity within White’s thought, the full implications of which will be discussed later in this chapter. That said, this ambiguity is in no way confined to White alone. While a variety of thinkers employed the concept of tropes in order to describe the ways in which thought/writing were structured, there was a significant debate concerning the level (i.e. in language, in thought, in the unconscious) on which tropes could be understood to function. For a fuller discussion of alternate systems that used tropes during this period, see Hans Kellner’s “The Inflatable Trope as Narrative Theory: Structure or Allegory?” and “Tropology vs. Narrativity: Freud and The Formalists,” both in Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1989.
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“constitutive of the structure that will subsequently be imaged in the verbal model
offered by the historian as a representation and explanation of ‘what really happened’
in the past.96” Deriving the basic details of his system from work of Kenneth Burke
and Roman Jakobson, White describes a system of tropes divided into the four
possible options of Metaphor, Synecdoche, Metonym, and Irony. These four tropes
can be understood as denoting relationships in which one object can validly be
described in terms of its “similarity or difference to another” (metaphor), its
macrocosmic-microcosmic relation of quality (synecdoche), its place in a in part-
whole relationship (metonym), or by means of a view of all linguistic descriptions
that doubts the fundamental validity of any comparison, including the stability of the
connection between words and objects (irony)97. To a certain extent, the application
of the concept of tropes to historical writing can be understood as emerging from a
further elaboration of the long-held Narrativist position, that the practice of history
functions in a manner fundamentally different from the sciences. This difference was,
as has been previously discussed, located in history’s reliance on narrative form and
its accompanying goal of providing meaning/understanding instead of
explanatory/predictive knowledge. Accepting the basic suppositions of this argument,
White looked to expand upon on it by analyzing the functioning of the language of
these narratives as they appeared in historical writing. Filtered through the lens of
literary theory, this approach lead White to recognize that there are levels of meaning
generating activity present in historical writing that have been entirely neglected by
previous methods of analysis. Primary among these unrecognized aspects is the extent
96 White, Metahistory, 31. 97 White, Metahistory, 34-38.
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of the role played by the tropes in allowing historians to formulate their
understanding of the past.
Ultimately, White concluded that the physical sciences, despite the possibility
of paradigmatic shifts in their conceptual framework of description98, operated
according to a single shared understanding of the modality of the basic relationships
that govern the contents of their of study field. In contrast, the historical profession
has no such linguistic stability, and is therefore subject to the “conceptual anarchy
which is characteristic of ‘fields of study’ still unreduced to the status of genuine
scientific disciplines.99” White identifies the cause of this failure to linguistically
cohere with the historically specific and politically motivated manner in which the
historical profession underwent a process of disciplinization. Because this process
was based on political fiat rather than organic cohesion, White argued that existence
of a non-technical and fluid vocabulary still continued, allowing historical accounts to
utilize radically differing tropic formulations of the basic nature of their field, and
causing conceptual battles of a kind that simply did not exist within the natural
sciences. “Historiographic disputes will tend to turn, not only upon the matter of what
are the facts, but also upon that of their meaning. But meaning, in turn, will be
98 “What formal terminological systems, such as those devised for denoting the data of physics, envisage is the elimination of figurative usage altogether, the construction of a perfect ‘schemata’ of words in which noting ‘unexpected’ appears in the designation of the objects of study. For example, the agreement to use calculus as the terminological system for discussing the physical reality postulated by Newton represents the schematization of that area of discourse, though not of the thought about its objects of study. Thought about the physical world remains essentially figurative, progressing by all sorts of ‘irrational’ leaps and bounds from one theory to another- but always within the Metonymical mode.“ White, Metahistory, 33. 99 White, Hayden. “Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore”: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978, p. 71.
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construed in terms of the possible modalities of natural language itself and
specifically in terms of the dominant tropological strategies by which unknown or
unfamiliar phenomena are provided with means by different kinds of metaphoric
appropriations…100”
In essence, White argues that all human thought has an implicit need to
organize the basic nature of the underlying structure of any field of knowledge prior
to the active discernment of any of the objects of knowledge that could be said to
exist within this field. White calls the process of determining this basic structure the
act of prefiguration, which should be understood as occurring--in the fashion of a
Kantian a priori--not alongside or underneath perception, but as a part of the process
by which perception moves things from the formless chaos of the not-perceived into
the field of thought. According to this conception, it therefore becomes impossible to
separate the nature of an object from the tropic configuration of the field in which it is
understood. Applied to the field of history, this means that one cannot speak about
“the past” outside of the tropic configuration in which it has already been placed.
“Discourse [of which troping is the primary element] is intended to constitute the
ground whereon to decide what shall count as a fact in the matters under
consideration and to determine what mode of comprehension is best suited to the
understanding of the facts thus constituted…101” While this might appear to be highly
similar to the concept of “frames of description” described by Mink, the difference of
tropic configuration lies in the way that it functions behind and through the objects
being described. Whereas the product of a “frame of description” can be actively
100 White, Tropics of Discourse, 72. 101 White, Tropics of Discourse, 4.
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apprehended by the reader and then challenged through rational discussion, the
linkage between tropes and the basic nature of language makes them problematically
ungraspable due to their fundamental role in the configuration of any understanding
of the nature of reality. Because of this, tropes offer no point on which to anchor
intersubjective discussion; different tropes render the reality that is being troped
fundamentally different, and as a result, their functioning becomes far more basic to
historical writing, and the problems that they raised proved to be far more challenging
to the discipline as a whole.
Critical Analysis
Although it is clear that the concept of linguistic tropes holds a place of vital
importance in White’s system, his articulation of the actual role that they play is
highly ambiguous, easily leaving the reader without a clear understanding of precisely
how White understands them to practically function within the processes of historical
thought and writing. Far from being the result of inconclusive theorizing or
inadequate explanation, it is possible to read this ambiguity as being a tremendously
productive aspect of his system, allowing it to function in such a way so as to appear
conceptually and logically unified while enabling certain elements to covertly assume
a position at the forefront of the work’s rhetorical impact and at the head of its
functional implications. This occurs despite the lack of sanction provided for such
functioning by the stated logic that “officially” governs the system. This disjunction
between the stated and discursively “felt” implications of White’s work can be used
as a productive vantage point from which to examine the position that this body of
theory was able to assume in relation to the broader disciplinary discourses of history,
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a position that does much to explain the incredible influence that this work had on the
field as a whole.
Of fundamental importance to this “productive ambiguity” is the manner in
which the linguistic tropes differ from the other categories used in White’s descriptive
schemata. These categories, reflecting a variety of aesthetic and intellectual choices
made by the historian, can be said to function at the level of concepts or ideas, and are
therefore firmly anchored at a fairly high level of cultural complexity. Regardless of
exactly how the historical/cultural status of an idea is considered, the categorical
options given by White’s theory all suggest entities with enough independent
presence to allow for their critical/self-reflexive apprehension by those engaged in the
writing of history, thereby allowing a clear element of conscious choice in the
selection process. However, because tropes function at the lowest possible linguistic
level, they operate in a completely different manner, and can therefore only be
perceived through an analysis focused on the structure instead of the content of
historical thought. This raises a significant question of intentionality on the part of the
historian. If “it is by figuration that the historian virtually constitutes the subject of
the discourse; his explanation is little more than a formalized projection of qualities
assigned to the subject in his original figuration of it,102” and furthermore, the basic
concept of this figuration requires that it necessarily occur prior to the historian’s
interaction with the body of historical evidence, thereby functioning in a manner
“precognitive and pre-critical in the economy of the historian’s own
102 White, Tropics of Discourse, 107.
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consciousness,103” it appears valid to ask whether White has articulated a system of
complete linguistic determinism, one in which historians search the past to obtain the
meanings that they themselves have just finished placing there.. This impression is
especially difficult to ignore when one considers the large-scale “tropic cycle” that
White believes is underlying the stylistic/conceptual progression of the nineteenth-
century historians that he has chosen to discuss in terms of a “closed-cycle
development. For each of the modes can be regarded as a phase, or a moment, within
a tradition of discourse which evolves from Metaphorical, through Metonymical and
Synecdochic comprehension of the historical world, into an Ironic apprehension of
the irreducible relativism of all knowledge.104” This tropic progression, which moves
through history and therefore seemingly outside of the control of the individual
historian, reflects a general working out of the possibilities of historical language,
even to the point at which intellectual positions with far reaching real-world
consequences seem to be ascribed to the independent movement of this system. “The
actual elaboration of these possibilities…plunged European historical thinking into
the ironic condition of mind which seized it at the end of the nineteenth century and
which is sometimes called the ‘crisis of historicism.’105”
103 White, Metahistory, 31. 104 White, Metahistory, 38. 105 White, Metahistory, XII. For a criticism of White’s deeply problematic and generally unconvincing consideration of the relationship between the dynamics of tropological cycles, the work process of individual historical writers, and the general reading public that ultimately served as the arbiter of historical success through their choice to read (and thus to render historically notable) the historians that White has chosen as exemplary of their time, see the article “The presuppositions of Metahistory” by Maurice Mandelbaum, in “Metahistory: Six Critiques”, Middletown: Wesleyan University press, 1980, 38-54.
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This possibility of a linguistically based determinism noticeably clashes with
other important aspects of White’s basic theoretical project. Of these, perhaps the
most important is White’s conviction of the importance of critically reflexive
thinking, which he considers to possess the ability to overcome the “crisis of
historicism” caused by the ideologically and intellectually problematic
historiographic position held by much of the discipline. “I do not deny that the
Formalism of my approach to the history of historical thought itself reflects the Ironic
condition from within which most of modern academic historiography is generated.
But I maintain that the recognition of this Ironic perspective provides the grounds for
a transcendence of it. If it can be shown that irony is only one of a number of possible
perspectives on history, each of which has its own good reasons for existence on a
poetic and moral level of awareness, this Ironic attitude will have begun to be
deprived of its status as a necessary perspective from which to view the historical
process. Historians and philosophers of history will then be freed to conceptualize
history, to perceive its contents, and to construct narrative accounts of its processes in
whatever modality of consciousness is most consistent with their own moral and
aesthetic aspirations.”106
The possibility of attaining a self-constructed freedom through historiographical
choice holds a place of deep importance in White’s thought, one that is present from
its very beginnings. In an interview discussing formative influences, he discusses the
impact of the existentialist conception of humanity to his intellectual and
philosophical development, saying, “I think that the existentialist notion of the
106 White, Metahistory, 434.
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situation that calls for choice and commitment or renunciation, is the peculiarly
human one… It seems to me that you can’t live a human life without structure, but
you can’t live a personal life without the event, without the situation of choice…so
there’s a sense in which the possibilities of choice may be determined by the
situation, but choice is still necessary within it, including the choice of rejecting the
structure of the situation, the revolutionary choice. And for me this has no grounding
in transcendental concepts; I think it has to do with the human condition.”107 For
White, the goal of his theoretical work is not merely to describe the “prison-house of
language” that formed the ultimate limit of possibility for so many structuralist
philosophers, but to provide the basis for a position from which it would be possible
to take meaningful action. In reference to the practice of history, this position can be
understood as one in which historians would be able to free themselves from the
normative styles of emplotment supported by the traditional orientation of the
discipline of history, enabling them to construct historical work able to fit their times
and circumstances rather than the conditions that existed in the period when the basic
academic practice of the discipline was first set108.
There is an unbridgeable gap between this belief and the theoretical argument
for the “pre-cognitive and pre-critical” position occupied by the tropes; this
107 Erlend Rogne, “The Aim of Interpretation Is To Create Perplexity In The Face Of The Real: Hayden White In Conversation With Erlend Rogne.” History and Theory, Vol. 48, No. 1 (2009), 64-65. 108 “We do not have to impute dark ideological motives to those who endowed history with the authority of a discipline in order to recognize the ideological benefits to new social classes and political constituencies that professional, academic historiography served and, mutatis mutandis, continues to serve down to our own time.” White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1987, 61.
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constitutes, a fundamental flaw in the logical structure of White’s theory. Analyzed in
purely philosophical terms, the discovery of such a flaw would either consign White’s
work to the scrap-heap of systematic philosophies, or require an effort to plug the
hole, and thereby “salvage” the system. However, both of these approaches are based
on a judgment that considers the success of a work in relation to its consistency
within a single type logic. In direct contradiction to this principle, the genius of
Metahistory, and of White in general, is its refusal to function in such a one-
dimensional manner. Instead, White’s rhetorical embrace of a multi-logical, and thus
inherently contradictory, vision goads his readers to come to an evaluation that takes
the work on its own terms, and that therefore will judge it based on the conditions that
it enacts, the goals that it attempts, and the context in which it was created. With this
as a model, the discovery of a contradiction within White’s work should be
considered an opportunity, indicating an area in which two or more irreducible
spheres of logic meet by means of a rhetorical (or tropic) seam in the text. The
analysis of this disjunction can be used as an exploratory wedge, making it possible to
delve beneath the logical structure of Metahistory’s surface and uncover the
heterogeneous configurations of its underlying conceptual dynamics, a rhetorically
ordered dimension of the text the functioning of which is usually concealed by its
exterior.
Within “Metahistory” and “Tropics of Discourse,” White’s previously
discussed goal of “historiographic freedom” is closely related to two possible
applications of his theory, both of which are vital to the ultimate rhetorical/conceptual
functioning of the system as a whole, but neither of which are necessarily logically
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important to the general schematic. The first of these applications is in many ways
similar to the conceptions behind the Marxist idea of cultural critique, essentially
claiming the possibility of “revealing” the true nature of an ideology, and thereby
allowing those formerly functioning within it to see the actual nature of their position
and actions. Functioning in this manner, White’s explication of the tropic nature of
historical explanation could potentially allow historians the freedom to recognize the
ways in which the disciplinary establishment of the profession is based on a certain
set of explanatory modes that do not necessarily exhaust the full possibilities of
historical writing. “It may be observed that if historians were to recognize the fictive
[read here as constructed] element in their narratives, this would not mean the
degradation of historiography to the status of ideology or propaganda. In fact, this
recognition would serve as a potent antidote to the tendency of historians to become
captive of ideological preconceptions which they do not recognize as such but honor
as the ‘correct’ perception of ‘the way things really are.109’” The self-knowledge that
it is possible to gain through the proper application of theory can enable a
transcendence of one’s tropic position, thereby allowing the historian to choose an
emplotment based on a more clear-sighted understanding of his/her
cultural/disciplinary context. This possibility is seen in White’s previously mentioned
belief that “the recognition of [an] ironic perspective provides the ground for a
transcendence of it.” In many ways, the second important application of White’s
theory is the constructive counterpart to the disruption of ideologies just mentioned. It
posits that, given the undeniable impact that historical understanding can exert on the
109 White, Tropics of Discourse, 99.
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beliefs and self-conceptions of those for whom it is written, it is the duty of historians
to construct a past that will be useful for the society in which they live. Once it has
been accepted that the methodological objectivity of the historical discipline is itself
implicated in any number of social agendas, it becomes impossible for one to practice
history without taking an active stance related to institutional and personal value-
systems, and as a result, the writing of history becomes an act fraught with moral
implications. This idea can be seen in the sentence following the one quoted above, in
which White states that “Historians and philosophers of history will then be freed to
conceptualize history, to perceive its contents, and to construct narrative accounts of
its processes in whatever modality of consciousness is most consistent with their own
moral and aesthetic aspirations.110” Such a productive history could then function as a
deeply positive element in human culture, richening and deepening the experience of
life.111
Taken together, these twin programs for the application of White’s theory can
be understood as sketching out, even if only in the barest possible manner, a general
portrait of White’s personal philosophies of both history and human nature, as well as
the way in which the moral implications of these philosophies relate to the content of
his theoretical work. However, the exposition of these beliefs is inextricably bound to
the theoretical systematizing of Metahistory, the formalist approach of which
smoothly integrates them into the whole. This makes it nearly impossible to
accurately pin down their true nature because of the ways in which they, functioning
110 White, Metahistory, pg 434 111 “And historical consciousness will stand open to the re-establishment of its links with the great poetic and scientific, and philosophical concerns…” ibid.
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according to a different order of logic from much of the rest of the system, primarily
reveal themselves through the theoretical formulations as they are stated on the
surface of the text. I believe that understanding this underlying theoretical system is
absolutely vital for truly grasping the import, both historically and philosophically, of
Hayden White’s work. Not only is it necessary to gain a more nuanced understanding
of the structural connections between these beliefs and the formally articulated
theoretical content of White’s work because of the effects that these relationships had
on the functioning of the text as a rhetorical/aesthetic whole, but it is equally
important to note that this underlying system carries significant content in its own
right, including many of the most important (and least considered) aspects of White’s
philosophical work.
In order to fully engage with this material, it is necessary to switch the
analytical approach being used. Instead of drawing examples from “Metahistory” and
“Tropics of Discourse,” it is necessary to move towards a more historical form of
investigation, reading White against himself by tracing the development of his ideas
in his earlier writings before the systematic extension that they underwent as they
were integrated into the overarching structure of the texts. Such a reconstructive
process is necessary to destabilize the appearance of an evenhanded functioning
based on an entirely neutral form of logic, which is one of the single most important
rhetorical attributes of Metahistory. The straightforward and self-confessed “formal”
approach that White adopts throughout the text does an exemplary job of masking the
varying levels of importance that he has actually assigned to the various parts of the
system. The result of this masking is that conceptual linkages made for highly